,0 o. 



o 



,0o. 




k 0o. 











fa * 8 






















1 6 



m%t a 



si 



* A "> 



o 0' 



THE DAY OF THE CRESCENT 



THE DAY OF THE CRESCENT 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
C. F. CLAY, Manager 
LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 




NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 
BOMBAY 

^CALCUTTA -MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
MADRAS 

TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF 

CANADA, Ltd. 
TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



THE DAY OF THE CRESCENT 

GLIMPSES OF OLD TURKEY 



BY 

G. E. HUBBARD 

LATELY H.M. VICE-CONSUL FOR THE VILAYET OF MOSUL 

Author of From the Gulf to Ararat 



CAMBRIDGE 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1920 



PREFACE 



THIS book issues from the press on the eve of the 
conclusion of the Turkish Peace Treaty. The occa- 
sion lends an added piquancy to the subject. Turkey 
in defeat contrasts with Turkey triumphant and the gulf 
between gives the measure of a nation's fall. 

The Treaty, unless all the signs are at fault, will 
reduce a straggling and divided Empire to a compact 
and unified State, and launch Turkey on a new era of 
existence as an ethnical unit. Her development on 
these new lines will profoundly affect the course of 
history in the Nearer East and will certainly be 
watched keenly by all who study the trend of events 
in that quarter of the globe. In this class of readers 
one may safely pqstulate a retrospective interest in the 
nation's past, and to them I confidently commend this 
humble attempt to create a picture of the golden age of 
Turkey. 

For the rest, my aim will be rewarded if the book 
makes an appeal to the sense we all possess for the 
exotic and picturesque, while throwing a little fresh light 
on the history and character of a people whom English- 
men have found worthy of their steel ever since the 
days when first they met 

"in glorious Christian field, 
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross 
Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens." 

{Richard II, IV. I.) 

I am indebted to the editor of The United Services 
Magazine for permission to incorporate in this book the 



vi 



Preface 



greater part of an article entitled " The Fighting Turk " 
which I contributed to a recent issue, and I have to 
acknowledge the courtesy of the Hakluyt Society in 
agreeing to use being made of the Society's reprints of 
the Covel and Dallam diaries. 

Professor E. G. Browne has most kindly corrected 
the proofs of the book with a view to the orthography 
of oriental names and words, and Mr Wratislaw, His 
Majesty's Consul-General at Beyrout, and a direct 
descendant of the Baron Wratislaw who figures in the 
book as the hero of the last two chapters, has given me 
most useful assistance in revising the text. 

G. E. H. 

April, 1920 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PREFACE v 



INTRODUCTION i 

A literary "find." The old travel-books and their authors. The 
Turkish Peril. How the Grand Turke addressed the Princes of 
Christendom. The taint of Byzantium. Turkish militarism. 
The fate of an empire. 



CHAPTER I 

A LITTLE CONDENSED HISTORY 7 

The period of the book. Last of the Crusades. " The scourge 
of God." Selim the Grim. Suleyman the Magnificent. An 
example of chivalry. Conquests and reforms. A dramatic death 
scene. The story of Count Christopher. A series of royal de- 
generates. Murad the Fourth. A family of great Vizirs. The 
second siege of Vienna. Decapitation of an ostrich. A terrible 
record. The end of an era. 



CHAPTER II 

THE OLD SERAGLIO AND THE ADVENTURES OF AN 

ORGAN-BUILDER 25 

A city of fair fame. Sandys describes the seraglio. A perilous 
pleasaunce. ■ A Sultan's pay-roll. The palace pages. A drastic 
curriculum. Master Thomas Dallam. A gift to the Sultan. The 
wonderful organ. The dress rehearsal. Seeing round the palace. 
Sultanas at play. Chased by blackamoors. Safely home. 

CHAPTER III 

THE SULTAN'S ARMIES 39 

Origin of the Janissaries. A ceremony of initiation. Life in the 
ranks. The regimental cauldron. The Janissary's charter. From 
body-guard to regicide. Spahis and piades. A prototype of the 
Red Knight. Artillery. A remarkable gun-team. The corps of 
" Mad-caps." The Tartar auxiliaries. Licensed freebooters. 



viii 



Contents 



CHAPTER IV 



A PALACE AUDIENCE 



PAGE 

5o 



A stir in the bailaggio. The crossing of the Golden Horn. 
Through old Stamboul. Entering the Seraglio. The two court- 
yards. The Janissaries' dinner-call. Admittance to the divan. 
A cabinet meeting. Business of state. A gargantuan feast 
The Sultan on his throne. A dazzling spectacle. A diplomatic 
reconciliation. 



CHAPTER V 

AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE (1) ... 62 



Truce between Turkey and the Empire. The new ambassador. 
Journey to Constantinople. Dr Quackquelben's misadventure. 
Bulgarian costumes. The Sultan's zoo. The credulous hyena. 
Suleyman at Amadia. A Persian banquet. An unpropitious 
reception. Portrait of Suleyman. Homeward bound. An 
agonizing sight The price of a nose. A brief respite. 



CHAPTER VI 
AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE (2) 78 



"A bushel of troubles." Pertinacity in adversity. An invaluable 
recipe. Gloomy quarters. The embassy menagerie. The pig 
and the door-keeper. Affection in a crane. Gentle horses. 
Morale of the Turkish army. A damaging comparison. The 
symbolic melon. Outwitting a chaoush. A military march-past. 
A row with the Janissaries. 



CHAPTER VII 
AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE (3) ... 93 



The relics of a fleet The fate of the prisoners. A work of hu- 
manity. A puritanic monarch. The Pestilence. Escape to 
Prinkipo. A fisherman's paradise. The fat Franciscan. Story 
of the HojVs sleeve. The end in sight. A surly farewell. Ameni- 
ties of the road. Henry and the hatchet. A satisfactory ending. 



The book-shelves of the " Green Dragon." A philosophic globe- 
trotter. By caravan to Turkey. Serajevo. Falling in with the 
army. Company for the Devil. A short way with miscreants. 
A grisly tower. Luxurious ''bashaws." Wives and Catimites. 
The pasha's offer. A bloody revenge. A reluctant parting. 



CHAPTER VIII 




TWO MARTIAL ADVENTURES (1) 



106 




Contents ix 
CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

TWO MARTIAL ADVENTURES (2) 116 



War between the Poles and Turks. The armies meet. The 
opening attack. Running the blockade. A mediaeval trench 
raid. The Turks' "big push." Holding the breach. Behemoth 
bound. A petulant Sultan. Reception of the messengers. An 
elephant as a peace-offering. 

CHAPTER X 

A PERSIAN INTERLUDE . . 130 

The history of " Long Hassan." 77 Magnifico Barbaro starts on 
his mission. Cyprian politics. Across Asia Minor. Ambushed 
by Kurds. Arrival at Tabriz. The garden-palace. An exciting 
tournament. The envoys from India. A punitive expedition. 
Fete champetre. A monstrous cake. The return to Venice. 

CHAPTER XI 

THE SULTAN'S NAVY 138 

A Pera " chestnut." Origin of the Turkish navy. The Barbary 
corsairs. Barbarossa. An apprenticeship in piracy. Doria 
enters the stage. Well-matched opponents. Barbarossa and 
Suleyman. The great Capudan Pasha. Battle of Prevesa. The 
church-bells of Nice. Mat rai's ul bahr. Captains Courageous. 
Indian adventures. Account of a cyclone. Ceding the trident. 
The victims of Jerba. The last fight of "The three halfe 
moones." The feat of John Foxe, Gunner. 

CHAPTER XII 

A DRAGOMAN'S DIARY 161 

The election of a bailo. A magnificent send-off. Overland to 
Stamboul. Conflicting astrologies. Sports on the At Maidan. 
Speeding the pilgrims. Preparations for war. Scenes at the 
camp. The Sultan's secret. An ill-omened start. The court at 
Belgrade. Premature rejoicings. The saving of Vienna. The 
Sultan's home-coming. The return of the Embassy. 

CHAPTER XIII 

A BELATED CRUSADE 179 

How Crete fell to Venice. The Turkish invasion. Candia be- 
sieged. The crusaders leave Toulon. An escapade in Sardinia. 
The landing at Candia. A discreditable episode. Manning the 
walls. The great sortie. A hopeless struggle. Calling the roll. 
A cosmopolitan garrison. Successive misfortunes. A survivor's 
quarantaine. 



X 



Co?ttents 



CHAPTER XIV 

PAGE 

A BUNDLE OF GLEANINGS 187 

An adventurous Don. The circumcision of a Prince. Pyro- 
technical marvels. Presents at a wedding. The cats' table d'hote. 
"Fruits on a Dunghill." A lesson in modesty. Grelot's adven- 
ture. The z'mam's lamps. Sketches of dervishes. A colony of 
sorceresses. Mohammed's fowls. A Pasha in a powdering-tub. 

CHAPTER XV 

A PRISONER IN THE GALLEYS, etc. (1) .... 200 
Christian prisoners in Turkey. The mission to Constantinople. 
The mission is interned. Spying on the Turks. A shameless 
betrayal. The arrest of the mission. Threatened with "gauch- 
ing." Refusal to apostate. The arsenal prison. Mass under 
difficulties. The eating of "Marko." Condemned to the galleys. 
Life of a galley-slave. Hunger and torture. Locked in the Black 
Tower. The agha of the Tower. A living purgatory. A heart- 
less joke. 

CHAPTER XVI 

A PRISONER IN THE GALLEYS, etc. (2) 221 
A ray of hope. Disillusionment follows. The new Grand Vizir. 
A petition and its answer. Summoned to the divan. A friend 
in need. Freedom from fetters. The adieux at the Tower. 
Marching with the army. Promises of liberty. A serious hitch. 
Escape from the army. Encounter with Tartars. Saved by a 
thunderstorm. Crossing the lines. A target for cannon-balls. 
Safe among friends. Arrival at Prague. A great-hearted 
Englishman. Faith in captivity. Exeunt omnes. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



General view of Constantinople . . Frontispiece 

Seraglio Point To face page 26 

A Turkish Lady 37 

A Janissary 40 

The A gha of the Janissaries . . . „ „ 42 

A "madcap" . . . ... . . „ „ 48 

A Cadilesker 54 

The Grand Vizir „ „ 87 

A Ho/a „ 100 

Warship passing down the Bosphorus . „ „ 140 

Turkish wrestling 165 

An officer of Janissaries „ „ 170 

Turkish fireworks „ 190 

Grelot's sketch of Sta Sofia . ' . . „ 194 

A "Geomailer" „ 196 

The site of the Black Tower . . . „ „ 214 



INTRODUCTION 



A year ago, while delving among some of the dustiest 
bookshelves of the Foreign Office library, I happened 
on a row of ancient books on Turkey bound for the 
most part in decrepit leather bindings with a faded, but 
illustrious, coat-of-arms stamped on their covers. They 
proved on closer inspection to belong to a collection 
bequeathed some time in the last century by a noble 
diplomat who, when attached to the Constantinople 
embassy, had made a hobby of collecting books on 
Turkish travel of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies. Having been myself a sojourner and traveller 
in Turkey, my curiosity was roused by these time-worn 
records from an earlier age and I dipped into them with 
an idle interest, to find myself rapidly engrossed in a 
quite fascinating study. 

The authors were a cosmopolitan and heterogeneous 
lot, including among others such diverse characters as 
a Flemish diplomat, a French artist, a Polish soldier, 
a Venetian dragoman and an English man of science. 
Their stories of how they travelled, painted, plotted or 
fought according to their several capacities are full of 
colour and romance and worthy products of the age of 
adventure in which the actors lived. The old-fashioned 
letterpress and quaint woodcuts which adorn their pages 
opened the door, moreover, into what was to me — as I 
venture to think it will be to most of my readers — an 
almost unexplored subject, the "Golden Age" of Turkey. 
No writer has given us a Rise and Fall of the Ottoman 
Empire, or painted the life of Constantinople in the 



H. 



I 



2 



Introdtiction 



great days of the Turk as Gibbon painted it under the 
Byzantine emperors. Modern histories of Turkey rarely 
descend to picturesque detail and even the homely, dis- 
cursive works of old Richard Knollys and Sir Paul 
Rycaut penetrate but seldom beyond the regions of 
affairs of state. These old travel-books, on the other 
hand, raise the curtain on the Turkish life of their day 
in all its intimate aspects. The stage is crowded with 
picturesque figures — the proud and petulant Janissary, 
the naked, screaming dervish, the " three-tail" Pasha 
with his train of 4 'catamites" and extravagant suite, the 
wild, undisciplined Tartar, the Grand Vizir risen from 
a swineherd to the highest post in the Empire and the 
" Grand Turke" himself challenging Christendom, with 
a sublime contempt for all brother kings and emperors. 
The scenes among which the actors play are besides of 
infinite variety, ranging the scale from the dazzling 
splendours of the Grand Signior's court to the unspeak- 
able horrors of life in the slave-galleys. 

I have tried, by a process of selection and compres- 
sion, to fit the most interesting parts of these old nar- 
ratives into the pages of the present book, and have 
aimed at doing so in such a way as to give as general 
a picture as possible of the unique military and political 
system which the Turks had developed when they 
reached the summit of their power. It is easy to forget 
how great that power was and what an immense menace 
the Turks, with their incomparable military organiza- 
tion, laid upon the rest of Europe during the period 
with which we have to deal. One need only look at 
the many references to the Turks in Shakespeare's 
plays to realize how much the Turkish peril obsessed 
the minds of our Elizabethan ancestors. A couple of 



Introduction 



3 



instances taken from contemporary publications may not 
be out of place. 

In the preface of Knollys's Historie of the Turkes 
published in 1610, we come on the following dirge "The 
Long and still declining state of the Christian Common- 
wealthe with the dishonour done unto the blessed name 
of Oure Savioure, the desolation of the Church militant 
hereon Earth, thedreadfull dangers daily threatened unto 
the poor remainder thereof, the millions of souls cast 
headlong into eternal destruction, the infinity of woefull 
Christians whose grievous groans under the heavy yoke 
of Infidelity no tongue is able to express, might worthily 
move even a stonie heart to ruth and give just cause to 
any good Christian to sit downe and, with the heavie 
prophet, to say 'Oh, how hath the Lord darkened the 
Daughter of Zion in His wrath and cast downe from 
Heaven unto Earth the beautie of Israel!'" Even al- 
lowing that Knollys — a Fellow of Lincoln College and, 
generally speaking, a well-balanced writer — may have 
been something of an alarmist, one can hardly doubt 
that his dismal forebodings of the overwhelming of 
Christendom by the oncoming Turk reflected to a great 
extent the current feeling of his day. 

The second instance may help to explain how this 
fear of the Turk came to be deeply implanted by 
showing us the astonishing attitude which the Sultan of 
Turkey felt able to adopt in his dealings with Christian 
monarchs. It is taken from a pamphlet published in 
London "at the Sign of the White Swan" in 1606, 
giving an English translation of "A letter of the Great 
Turke recently sent to all the Kings and Princes of 
Christendom." The letter is too long to quote in full, 
but the tenor of it is as follows : 

1 — 2 



Introduction 



Sultan Ahmed, " Shadow of God upon Earth, Barron 
of Turkie, Lord of the Upper and Lower Seas, Beloved 
in Heaven" — with a dozen more titles in a similar strain 
— calls upon the Great Champion of Rome (alias the 
Pope) and his Confederates, the Princes of Christendom, 
to submit themselves to his will and manifest their sur- 
render by homages and tribute. 

If they obey 4 4 and open their Townes and Gates," 
the Sultan will of his clemency suffer them to retain 
their faith and "accustomed ceremonies," but if they 
resist, then let them expect " nought else but mortall 
warres and firing of cities, with greate occision and 
deathe both of olde and young." The Christian Princes 
are advised "to take example by the Great Souldan of 
Babylon, whom we spoiled of his dignitie and pursued 
unto deathe" (a bit of quite gratuitous perversion this, 
as the Turks had, as a matter of fact, just suffered a 
notable disaster at Bagdad at the hands of Shah Abbas 
and his Persians), and are warned that presently the 
whole world will bow down to Sultan Ahmed, whose 
armies "are even now marching through Hungarie to 
invade all Germanie and the noble countrie of France" 
and will shortly capture Rome, "whose gorgeous temples 
shall be used as was the temple of the Holy Sophie." 

This wild braggadocio of the nineteen-year-old 
Sultan strikes absurdly enough on modern ears, but we 
can be sure that it held little of mirth for a generation 
to whom the Turk was a veritable bogy and who could 
never forget that thousands of their fellow-Christians 
were labouring and dying as slaves in the Turkish 
galleys. 

In the various stories reproduced in this book one 
can hardly fail to be struck by the two leading charac- 



Introduction 



5 



teristics which marked the Turk in the days of his 
prime — his inordinate love of display and his inherent 
" militarism." The first of these was, I think one may 
safely say, a borrowed characteristic. The Turk was a 
simple primitive creature when he first emerged on to 
the Anatolian plains to conquer a powerful empire. 
But his victory over the Greeks contained the seeds of 
his own ruin. The national failings which had weakened 
the Greek defence infected their conquerors, who soon 
acquired the true Byzantine taste for lavish show and 
voluptuous luxury. This, with its inevitable accom- 
paniment of bribery and corruption, slowly undermined 
the government of Turkey in the succeeding centuries, 
sapping the virility of her leaders and changing the 
character of her sultans from hardy tribal chiefs to the 
most contemptible of debauched despots. The process 
of the disease is easily traceable in the series of narra- 
tives embodied in the present volume. 

Militarism, on the contrary, was inbred from the 
start. The Turk has never regarded war as the devas- 
tating interlude which we are wont to consider it, but 
rather as a natural, and by no means undesirable, state. 
Until recent times the administration of Turkey was 
purely military and the usual distinctions between civil 
and military authority did not exist. To quote from Sir 
Charles Eliot's classical book on Turkey, " every Turk 
is born a soldier" ; in fact the Ottoman race is essentially 
a race of fighters. The course of history has done much 
to abet their natural aptitude. Their early career was 
passed in tribal warfare. Before they had fairly subdued 
their primitive rivals, they embarked on a David and 
Goliath struggle against the Western Empire, and on 
finally capturing Constantinople they found themselves 



6 



Introduction 



faced by enemies in every direction. A Christian con- 
federacy opposed them on one side, the Persians 
threatened on the other, while at sea they were at con- 
stant warfare with the Italian maritime states. For 
nearly three centuries they fought endless campaigns 
against Austria and Venice, their hereditary enemies, 
till with the consolidation of Russia a fresh and even 
deadlier enemy entered the field. Their struggle with 
Russia led on to the gradual disintegration of their vast 
empire, resulting in the wars of liberation which have 
lasted into the present century, only to be eclipsed in 
our own time by the general Armageddon. Turkish 
history, indeed, is one endless record of war — a fact 
reflected in the very large part which military topics 
occupy in the following pages. 

The military ' 'genius" and moral decadence which 
this book thus illustrates have been the two great factors 
in Turkey's existence, and the fate of the empire has 
largely depended on the balance between them. On 
the whole the latter has triumphed in spite of such bril- 
liant exceptions even in modern times as the defence 
of Plevna or the holding of San-i-yat and Achi Baba. 
The disease contracted by the conquerors of Byzantium 
sapped the strength of the race and hastened the close 
of the brilliant epoch of Turkish history which it is my 
object to present to the reader; but it has left the Ana- 
tolian peasant, the backbone of Turkey, almost untouched. 
"Baluk bashdan kokar" says the Turkish proverb, "the 
fish rots from the head" ; we have yet to see if the Turk 
will succeed in arresting the process downwards. 



CHAPTER I 



A LITTLE CONDENSED HISTORY 

The stories of Turkish travels in the pages of this book 
all fall within a period beginning in the middle of the 
sixteenth century and lasting some 1 50 years. 

This century and a half saw the acme of the Turks' 
power, the beginning of their downward course and the 
brief recovery which, like a St Luke's summer, broke 
with a short-lived burst of sunshine into the autumn of 
their decline. It also covered the fiercest phases of the 
struggle between Turkey and Christendom, including 
the two occasions when Europe was seriously threatened 
with a wholesale Ottoman invasion. It is, indeed, as 
dramatic a period of history as you well could find, be- 
sides playing an important part in the development of 
the whole of Eastern Europe. 

The present chapter by no means aims at giving 
a serious resumk of the times — anything of the sort, 
even were it within the writer's compass, would be out 
of place in the conception of this book as a collection 
of picturesque sketches. But the sketches will be better 
for being fitted into place, so for the sake of such of my 
readers as are not familiar with von Hammer or Creasy, 
I will attempt to reconstruct a slight historical back- 
ground for the events of the chapters which follow. 

To gain a connected idea of the relations between 
Turkey and the countries of Europe, it is well to go 
back nearly a century before the beginning of our period 



8 A Little Condensed History 



to the years immediately after the Fall of Constanti- 
nople. That impressive event raised a thorough panic 
throughout Europe and seemed likely for a time to re- 
vive the old Crusading spirit. The most extraordinary 
scenes resulted from the efforts of various princes to 
rouse the enthusiasm of Christian chivalry and raise 
volunteers for fresh crusades. Michaud describes, for 
instance, in his history of the Crusades, a fete which 
took place in the course of a congress at Lille which 
Philip of Burgundy had convoked to set on foot an ex- 
pedition. The proceedings began with tableaux vivants 
representing stirring classical scenes such as the Labours 
of Hercules and the Quest of the Golden Fleece, fol- 
lowed by a pageant in which a herald-at-arms carrying a 
pheasant (the emblem of bravery) ushered in an elephant 
led by a Saracen, with a " tower " on its back containing 
a lady in black (a type of the Christian Church) who 
recited inspiring verses. The knights who were present 
were so fired by the spectacle that they one and all swore 
by the lady never to rest again till they had met the 
Turk in mortal combat and performed some prodigy of 
valour against the foe of Christendom. Their ardour 
was rewarded by a lady in white with " Grace dieu " in 
golden letters on her back who presented to them seven 
lovely damsels representing the cardinal virtues, where- 
upon the whole assembly went off together to sup and 
dance ! 

But such-like fantastic attempts to resuscitate the 
crusades had little effect. The old spirit had been too 
effectually smothered by the pagan influences of the 
Renaissance, and the chronic state of discord in Europe 
made co-operative action almost impossible. Pius II 
made a brave attempt to organise and lead an army 



Popes and Sultans 



9 



against Constantinople, but only a moderate host of poor 
and badly equipped crusaders collected at the meeting- 
place at Ancona. The knights and barons had ignored 
his summons and the disappointed Pope died before 
the crusade could start. From this time forward it was 
left to the Knights of St John to champion the Cross 
against the Crescent. 

It was symptomatic of the change of mind which 
had come over Europe that when Charles VII I invaded 
Italy the King of Naples appealed for help simultane- 
ously to the Pope and the Sultan ! 

Leo X tried, it is true, to continue the work of Pius 
and again preached a crusade ; but his calls to the faith- 
ful remained unheeded. The wars between Francis and 
Charles were absorbing the energies of Europe, the 
Reformation spirit was already abroad and Luther him- 
self was preaching that the Turk was the Scourge of 
God and that it was impious to resist him. 

Turkey's Christian neighbours had meanwhile en- 
joyed a breathing space since the whirlwind campaign 
of Mohammed the Conqueror and his predecessors, 
thanks to the diversion of Ottoman enterprise in other 
directions. Selim the First, the cruel warrior-poet, spent 
his reigning years in leading the Turkish armies to new 
fields of conquest in the South and East. He had added 
huge tracts of Asia and Northern Africa to the empire, 
had forced the Persians back beyond Tabriz, and had 
conquered Syria, Arabia and Egypt. His taking of 
Cairo had, incidentally, resulted in an event of prime 
importance to the future history of Turkey, the last of 
the line of Abbaside caliphs — a creature at that time 
in the hands of the Mameluke rulers of Egypt — having 
been " persuaded " to transfer his hereditary office, to- 



io A Little Condensed History 



gether with the treasured standard and other relics of 
the Prophet, to the Sultan of Turkey who henceforward 
became Caliph of Islam. 

Such was broadly the position in 1 520 when the Sul- 
tanate passed to Suleyman the Second, surnamed "the 
Magnificent," in whose reign the period covered by this 
book begins. It is noteworthy that the half-century 
during which he governed Turkey was one of the most 
prolific of famous monarchs that history can show. His 
contemporaries on the thrones of Europe and Asia in- 
clude Queen Elizabeth, Francois Premier, the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth, Shah Ismail the restorer of Persia, 
and Akbar, the greatest of the Great Moguls. Suleyman 
can claim an honourable place among these historic 
figures. He was a man of most versatile talents, a fine 
general, a great administrator and a legislator of such 
note that he won the title of " Canuni" (the " Lawgiver"). 
Besides his sterner qualities he was a generous patron 
of the arts, a student and writer of history and in philo- 
sophy a disciple of Aristotle. He was also a very great 
builder, and it is to him that Constantinople owes its 
most splendid edifice of post-conquest date, the great 
Suleymanieh mosque. 

In the chapter dealing with the travels of Busbequius 
the reader will find a sketch of Suleyman in his old age; 
in his earlier years he has been described by an Italian 
writer as a tall, thin man with a complexion "as if 
smoked," prominent brow, fine black eyes "piu tosto 
pietosi che crudeli," aquiline nose and a thin mouth 
adorned by long moustaches and a forked beard. It 
is the picture of a proud and unrelentless man, and 
this Suleyman certainly was. He placed himself high 
above all other crowned heads, refused to correspond 



The great Suleyman 1 1 



with them on equal terms and treated them on a level 
with his own Vizir. Generous he could be when occa- 
sion warranted, as he showed when de Lisle Adam 
and the remnant of his knights surrendered Rhodes 
after their heroic defence of the town. Far from wreaking 
vengeance on the garrison for the enormous losses which 
the siege had cost him, Suleyman was moved only with 
admiration for their gallantry, and as they trooped out 
of the town gate he sent for their leader and congratu- 
lated him in public. The knights were allowed to leave 
the islands with the honours of war, taking their be- 
longings with them, and were even furnished with 
Turkish ships to transport them home to Europe. As 
a lasting mark of Suleyman's fine spirit on this occasion, 
the arms of many of the knights still remain, left intact 
by his orders, on the lintels of the houses which they 
abandoned to the Turks. 

The capture of Rhodes which was the scene of this 
incident happened in the third year of Suleyman's reign. 
Having disposed of this advanced outpost of Christen- 
dom which had long been a sharp thorn in the Turk's 
side, the Sultan turned his attention to Europe ; four 
years later he conquered Hungary and seven years later 
was besieging Vienna. Though the situation was saved by 
the brave Comte de Salm, the appalling ddbdcle which the 
Hungarians had met with at Mohacz and the narrowly 
averted irruption of the Turks into central Europe 
stirred the Pope to a last futile effort to raise a crusade. 
Clement VII, though a prisoner of the Germans in 
Rome, sent out a despairing cry to the Christian world 
to unite against the infidel and actually ordered the 
plate in all the churches in Italy to be sold to provide 
funds. The appeal fell on deaf ears, and Europe might 



12 A Little Condeitsed History 



easily have been overwhelmed by the Turk but for the 
intervention of fortune which distracted Suleymans at- 
tention to the more urgent task of repelling a Persian 
invasion. The old bitter hatred between Sunnite and 
Shiite and the Shah's efforts to regain his lost territories 
held the Ottoman armies engaged on the eastern frontier 
over the critical period. 

But although the Turks did not again in Suleymans 
time come within sight of the walls of Vienna, they 
made repeated campaigns into Europe and continually 
advanced their northern frontier. Hungary remained" 
in vassalage to Turkey and the Emperor Ferdinand's 
attempts to wrest it back, his failures to do so and 
efforts to come to a settlement with Suleyman were the 
occasion of the embassy of Busbequius whose adventures 
fill chapters v, vi and vn. 

Meanwhile with the help of the famous admiral 
Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa, the Turkish empire was ex- 
tended along the coast of Northern Africa till it included 
Tripoli and Algiers; the only serious check to Suleymans 
Mediterranean ambitions being his failure to take Malta, 
to which island the Knights of St John had migrated 
after the loss of Rhodes. 

At the same time that he was extending his power 
abroad Suleyman was busy with reorganisation at home. 
He split up the empire into pashaliks and sanjaks, the 
same divisions roughly as exist to-day, laid down a 
law for the rayahs, giving them for the first time the 
right to hold property, remodelled the criminal law, 
founded schools, endowed the ulema and indulged in 
advanced economic experiments as, for instance, the 
regulation of prices and wages. He granted the first 
" Capitulations " (mark again the arrogant term to ex- 



A dramatic death scene 



13 



press what was really a treaty) which were obtained by 
the French in 1535. 

His end was dramatic. He was an old man of 
seventy when he marched into Europe for the last time, 
leading a campaign against the Emperor Maximilian II 
who had succeeded his old enemy Ferdinand two years 
before. He had been checked on his last campaign by 
the fortress of Szigeth and was resolved this time to 
take it. The place was garrisoned by 3000 troops under 
Nicolas Zriny. Suleyman with 50,000 men sat down 
to besiege it. For months Zriny held out in the citadel 
till all hope of relief had vanished. Then he made his 
memorable sortie. On the chosen day every gun in the 
place was lined up behind the gates and filled to the 
muzzle, the remaining stock of powder was collected in 
one huge mine and the garrison prepared for the final 
sortie. All the knights put on their finest robes and 
jewellery while Zriny armed himself with the keys of the 
castle and a purse with a hundred pieces of gold " so," 
he said, " that the man who lays me out shall not com- 
plain that his work is wasted." On the signal the gates 
were thrown suddenly open, all the guns discharged 
point-blank into the Turkish hosts outside and the 
knights charged out in a body. The tremendous 
numbers of the Turks bore them back within the citadel 
when the mine exploded involving Turk and Magyar 
alike in a mighty holocaust. 

The city which had defied Suleyman and which he 
had sworn to capture was taken, but Suleyman himself 
knew nothing of it. For two days his lifeless corpse with 
open eyes and cheeks artificially reddened had sat in 
his tent propped upright on the divan. His Vizir and 
a few of his trusted servants were alone in the secret, 



14 A Little Condensed History 

which they hid from the outside world by allowing no 
break to occur in the ordinary daily routine. To all 
appearance reports were regularly made to the dead 
Sultan, meals served, messages received and sent. The 
moment that Szigeth fell the royal tent was struck and 
the royal carriage with the Emperor's person visible 
inside headed for Constantinople. Selim, the heir to 
the throne, had been privately warned and hastened to 
meet the returning army. 

They met at Adrianople, where the Sultan's death 
was at last publicly announced ; Selim was acclaimed 
emperor by the assembled troops and, the danger of 
civil war being passed, it was possible to proceed openly 
with the funeral arrangements and to carry Suleyman's 
remains to their last resting-place in his own tomb- 
mosque at the capital. 

Fifty years later Suleyman's epitaph was written by 
Richard Knollys the English historian, who commemo- 
rates the great Sultan in the following verse : 

Magnificent Soliman mounts his father's throne 
With Christian slaughters formidable growne. 
Rhodes, Naxos, Paros felt his crueltie 
And the sweet waters of the Tyrrhenean sea. 
Th' Hungarian territories he did invade, 
And fierce attempts on fair Vienna made, 
Till from the walls of Sigeth meanly come, 
Th' aspiring tyrant crept to his long home. 

The State archives of Vienna preserve a contem- 
porary account of the adventures of one of Comte de 
Salm's officers at the siege of Vienna which is worth 
quoting as an example of the nobler traits of Suleyman 
and his officers. Count Christopher von Zedlitz, a Cornet 
in the Austrian army, was taken prisoner by the Turks 
in a skirmish outside Vienna. After trying without 



A test of chivalry 



15 



success to strip off his armour, his captors put him on a 
baggage-mule and carried him to Headquarters. 

There he was brought to Ibrahim Pasha, the Grand 
Vizir, who gave orders that his cuirass should be re- 
moved, but as none of the Turks present understood 
the intricacies of plate-armour Count Christopher re- 
mained safely ensconced in his shell. Eventually he 
was interrogated by the Sultan himself. " To him," 
says the record, 4 'Count Christopher made answer, that 
if assured of his life he would undo himself. When 
Ibrahim Pacha had given him such assurance, he showed 
the interpreter two little screws at the side, which being 
loosed, the cuirass came to its pieces, to the great wonder 
of the Turks. 

"As the account of these things spread itself through 
the camp, much was said of the feats of this man-at-arms, 
and of his singular dexterity under his strange attire, and 
everyone was curious to see him, being, moreover, among 
the first who had been taken prisoners out of the city 
itself of Vienna. He was, therefore, ordered to exhibit 
himself in full cuirass, armed at all points for the fight, 
and to prove whether in this fashion he could, without 
vantage, lift himself from the ground. On the following 
day, mules and several kicking horses being produced, 
Count Christopher laid himself on the ground with his 
cuirass screwed, and rising nimbly, without any vantage, 
sprung on a horse, and this he repeated several times ; 
and then, with running and vaulting, afforded those 
hellhounds a princely spectacle of knightly exercises to 
their great admiration, and specially that of Ibrahim 
Pacha, who soon after took him to himself, and kept 
him safe in his own custody. Meanwhile, there came 
to him certain officers to frighten or to prove him, telling 



1 6 A Little Condensed History 



him to hold himself in readiness, for that the Pacha 
would do him right that same day. To these he answered, 
that as a Christian he was in truth not afraid of death, 
as one who, in honour of his Redeemer, in obedience 
to his sovereign, and in defence of his country, had pre- 
pared himself by prayer for death at any hour or instant, 
and hoped and believed most certainly to enjoy eternal 
joy and happiness through Christ ; but, nevertheless, 
could not credit that such was the order of the Pacha, for 
he knew for certain that what the Pacha had promised 
he would perform like an honourable soldier. When this 
reached the Pacha, the longer he considered, the more 
he admired not only the knightly feats, but the noble 
spirit of this hero. When, also, Soliman himself asked 
him whether, if he should release him, he would still 
make war upon him, Count Christopher answered, un- 
dismayed, that if God and his Redeemer should grant 
him deliverance, he would while life lasted fight against 
the Turks more hotly than ever. Thereupon the Sultan 
replied, ' Thou shalt be free, my man, and make war 
on me as thou wilt for the rest of thy life.' 

" The Pacha, however, kept him in good case while 
the siege lasted, namely, about a month ; and in place 
of his cuirass gave him a dress of red velvet Tyrian 
stuff, which he wore and lay in night and day, and sent 
him from his own table meat and mixed drinks as daily 
prepared for himself, and even in course of time offered 
and gave him wine. 

" When the assault took place, the Count was left in 
the Pacha's tent without any special guard, but loose 
and free of his person, and able to look about him in 
the camp ; but when, by help of God, the Turks being 
repulsed broke up their Camp, the Pacha took the Count 



A human holocaust 



17 



with him the first day's march, but in the morning put 
another Turkish robe of velvet on him over the former, 
and added a present of a hundred aspers, and also a 
cavalry prisoner whom the Count knew and had begged 
for, and caused them to be honourably attended and 
passed safe, so that on the following day they reached 
Vienna, where the Count was honourably received by the 
princes, counts, gentlemen and officers there present." 

Such instances of chivalrous behaviour are not at 
all rare, but to balance the picture one must remember 
the appalling excesses of which the Turks were some- 
times guilty. At this same siege of Vienna the azabs 
and akinjis ravished and pillaged right into Styria, 
burning villages by the score and blotting out every 
trace of life over large areas. Worst of all was the scene 
when the Turks realized that it was beyond their power 
to take Vienna, and the order was given to break up 
camp. The troops set fire to their stores and encamp- 
ment and when the blaze under the city walls was at 
its height a large number of the prisoners in the camp 
were thrown alive on the flames in full view of the 
Viennese populace. It is only fair to say that Suleyman 
himself did not sanction, even if he failed to prevent, 
this atrocious act. 

Selim II, whom we left at Adrianople, confronting 
the bedizened corpse of his father, was the first of a series 
of dissolute sultans, but he continued Suleyman's agres- 
sive policy during the short eight years of his reign. 
The centre of his attacks shifted, however, east and 
west, against the Venetians on one side and the Don 
Cossacks on the other. He won Cyprus and lost the 
battle of Lepanto. In one very important respect he 
broke with the Turkish traditions. From the earliest 



H. 



2 



1 8 A Little Condensed History 



tribal days the Ottoman sultans had led their troops in 
battle, and Suleyman the Magnificent had commanded 
in person on all his campaigns. Selim was the first ex- 
ception : he sent his Grand Vizir into the field at the 
head of his armies and employed his own time in ignoble 
pursuits at home. 

This altered custom was typical of the change which 
had come over Turkey and was the first milestone on 
the steep descent down which the country was soon to 
plunge. Five models of ineptitude succeeded Selim — 
Murad III, whose reign included two of the events 
which find a place in this book, namely the adventures 
of Dallam, the organ-builder, and the dreadful experi- 
ences of the young Baron Wratislaw ; Mohammed III ; 
Ahmed I whose absurd fulminations against the " Princes 
of Christendom " have already been quoted, and who 
occupied the seraglio at the time of Sandys' visit; the 
gentle imbecile Mustapha I and finally Osman II who 
figures in the battle with the Poles at Chocim which 
is described in the diary of an eye-witness in chapter ix. 

War with the Holy Roman Empire broke out again 
under Murad III, but the Janissaries who by now were 
embarking on their wild career of bloodshed and anarchy 
no longer maintained their invincibility and the Turkish 
armies lost more than they gained in the struggle. 
Murad being dead, Mohammed was forced by a hand- 
ful of patriots to quit for a moment the pleasures of the 
seraglio and take the field at the head of the army. 
The sight of their Sultan leading them to battle as in 
the good old days revived the spirit of the troops to 
such a degree that they inflicted a crushing defeat on 
the Austrians at the battle of Cerestes. The peace 
which ensued ended the Hungarian wars for twenty 



The turn of the tide 



s 

19 



years to come. Turkey kept most of her gains in Europe 
but it was a significant sign of the times that the Sultan 
for the first time in history treated with Christian 
monarchs as his own equals and not as merely the 
" brothers " of his Vizir. 

During the next fifty years the balance between 
Turkey and Christendom remained at a standstill. It 
was really the pause of the tide before it changed to 
the ebb, and though the Turkish terror persisted for a 
time among Christian peoples, it is clear enough that 
the Turks had by now missed their chance to become 
a great civilization and were doomed to give way before 
the march of progress in Europe. Internally the rot 
was eating away the careful fabric built up by Suleyman. 
Three successive sultans ascended the throne at the 
ages respectively of 14, 11, and 7, and even those 
others who at least were grown men when they came 
to power had passed their whole previous life imprisoned 
in the seraglio in special quarters, known as "the 
cage." 

Murad IV, whose iron discipline and ruthless "ef- 
ficiency" appear in the narrative of Henry Blunt, formed 
a break in the line of worthless voluptuaries. He at 
least was a man of decision and action. The country 
was soaked in corruption and anarchy when he mounted 
the throne ; he treated its ills with a simple panacea ; 
every officer and every official who incurred his slightest 
suspicion of unloyal or dishonest behaviour lost his head 
in a trice, while a ferocious massacre of their leaders 
quelled the unruly Janissaries from the start. Murad, 
however, had little contact with Europe but was chiefly 
occupied in regaining from Persia what Shah Abbas the 
Great had won from his predecessor. 



2 — 2 



20 A Little Condensed History 



Persia and Turkey have clashed throughout history 
but their sternest struggles were in Murad's reign, when 
the Turks took Erivan and recovered possession of 
Bagdad which they held till the day when British troops 
followed General Maude through its gates. 

Murad was succeeded by the worst of all the bad sul- 
tans, Ibrahim. Jewelled coaches, rare furs and Georgian 
ladies were the only objects of his existence and the 
little time he spared from them he devoted to the per- 
secution of his rayahs. Regicide for once was justified 
when the Janissaries rose and killed him. His only 
interest for us is that, in revenge for the capture by a 
Venetian sea-captain of one of his sultanas travelling 
to Mecca, he started the Cretan war and the siege of 
Candia whither Monsieur de la Feuillade led his forlorn 
hope as recorded in chapter xni. 

I brahim was followed by Mohammed IV who, though 
by no means great in himself, had the sense to choose 
a great man as Vizir. This man was Mohammed Kiu- 
prulu, an Albanian by birth who started life as a palace 
cook, rose to be Vali and at the age of seventy was 
offered the Grand Vizirate. He took it on condition 
that the Sultan should give him absolute powers and 
at once began a thorough purging of the Turkish system. 
His methods were similar to those of Murad IV, and 
in the five years of his Vizirate he was credited with 
no less than 36,000 capital executions. 

His son Ahmed who followed him led a large army 
into Hungary against the great Count Montecuculi. 
The Thirty Years' War had taught Europe new methods 
in military science and put European armies ahead of 
the conservative Turks, who, for instance, kept to their 
sabres and failed to realize the superior possibilities of 



Second siege of Vienna 2 1 

the pike as an infantry weapon. Nor could all the 
Kiuprulus' efforts at regeneration cope with the indis- 
cipline and corruption which had rooted themselves in 
the nation. The consequence was that the great Im- 
perialist general utterly routed a Turkish force four 
times his own in numbers and took all their artillery at 
the battle of St Gotthard. Ahmed retrieved the disaster 
to a great extent by the astuteness he showed in the 
subsequent treaty which left Turkey suzerain over Tran- 
sylvania. He also won the Ukraine from John Sobiesky, 
the chivalrous King of Poland, who was destined fifteen 
years later to be the instrument of Europe's liberation 
from the secular Turkish menace. 

When Ahmed died in 1676 his immediate successor 
was not, unhappily for Turkey, another of the same 
family. Sultan Mohammed chose instead a man who 
was noted throughout the country for boundless greed 
and ambition. He was known as Black Mustafa and 
he is believed to have aimed at advancing the boundaries 
of Turkey to the Rhine and making himself Viceroy of 
a huge province extending thither from the Danube. 
With some such plan in view he urged the Sultan to 
war with Austria. The situation in Hungary was most 
propitious for the Turkish invasion as the country was 
racked with internecine strife. The Hungarians had 
lost all patience with the tyranny of the Emperor and 
his ruthless measures to crush the Protestants, and had 
formed a secret league against the Austrians. The in- 
surgents invited the help of the Sultan who responded 
only too readily and assembled the whole Turkish army 
for an attack on Vienna. In chapter xn we have the 
account of a Venetian dragoman who tells of the pre- 
parations for the great campaign, the assembling and the 



22 A Little Condensed History 



march northward of the huge Turkish army numbering 
nearly half-a-million men and of the desperate scenes 
which occurred when they returned later in rout and 
confusion. Vienna was saved by the unexpected acces- 
sion of the Poles to the Austrian cause and the brilliant 
and successful onslaught which their King Sobiesky 
made at the eleventh hour on the beleaguering Turkish 
army. An important contributory cause, however, was 
the inordinate greed of Black Mustafa whose claim to 
keep for himself all the money which might be taken 
from the city so disgusted his men that they lost heart 
in the fight. A proof of his extraordinary taste for fan- 
tastic luxury is supplied in a letter which Sobiesky wrote 
to his Queen describing Mustafa's camp as it was found 
when the Austrian troops entered it. 

He mentions the Vizir's charger discovered standing 
at the door of the tent so weighed down with its heavy 
caparisons including stirrups of solid gold as to be use- 
less for flight, the tent itself full of carpets and furs, 
jewelled arms and quivers studded with rubies and 
pearls and the enormous private camp containing not 
only fountains and baths, but even (mirabile dictu) a 
rabbit-warren and a small menagerie. A parrot took 
wing and foiled the pursuit of the Austrian soldiers 
and, strangest of all, a pet ostrich was found which had 
been beheaded by Mustafa's own sword to prevent its 
falling into Christian hands. A trophy of special interest 
was a large wooden cross which had regularly been set 
up in the Turkish camp for the mass celebrations of 
Contacuzenos, the Prince of Wallachia, the Sultan's 
Christian vassal. 

Mustafa paid the price of his failure with his life, 
meeting the messenger with the bow string ere ever he 



The great ddbacle 



23 



reached the shores of the Bosphorus. His head was 
carried to be shown to the Sultan who ordered that it 
should be taken to Belgrade and deposited there in a 
mosque. When the Turks lost Belgrade they left the 
grisly relic behind and it found its way to Vienna where, 
for all that I know to the contrary, it still lies in the 
city arsenal. 

The victory of the Christian arms was set off by the 
appalling depredations of the Turkish troops. A con- 
temporary Austrian record mentions that 4092 villages 
in the district of Vienna were burnt, and gives the 
following table of prisoners carried off into Turkish 
captivity : 

6,000 
11,215 

14,922 

26,093 
57,220 (sic) 



The colossal ddbdcle at Vienna was followed by a 
series of further disasters including the loss of Buda- 
Pesth, which had then been Turkish for 145 years, and 
the occupation by the Venetians of a large part of 
Greece. Two more Kiuprulus held the post of Vizir, 
the latter of whom, in the reign of Mustafa II, concluded 
the treaty of Carlowitz. 

On this famous occasion the Turks entered the con- 
ference chamber possessing nearly a quarter of Europe, 
if Russia be excluded ; they emerged with the loss of 
all Hungary except the Banat, half of Greece, the 
southern portion of Poland and a great stretch of the 



Old men 
Women 

Unmarried women, 26 years of age at the 
oldest, of whom 204 were noble 

Children, boys and girls, the oldest between 
4 and 5 years of age ... 

Total 



24 A Little Condensed History 



north coast of the Black Sea, to which Russia now- 
descended for the first time. But the treaty of Carlowitz 
was signed in the last year of the seventeenth century 
and we have already overshot the end of the period 
with which we are immediately concerned. 



CHAPTER II 



THE OLD SERAGLIO AND THE ADVENTURES 
OF AN ORGAN-BUILDER 

No city on the earth has, I suppose, had such en- 
comiums lavished upon it by literary travellers as 
Constantinople. 

One names it "the Mistress of two Continents," 
another "the Navel of the World" and all vie together 
in enthusiastic praises of its natural beauties. The 
limit of absurd hyperbole is reached by an early French 
writer — whose name I forget — when he solemnly 
affirms that not only do all the birds of the air flock to 
the neighbouring shores to revel in its charms, but that 
the very oysters of the Bosphorus may be seen leaping 
high above the waves to catch a glimpse of its unrivalled 
glories. 

A captious critic might possibly observe that al- 
though the Bosphorus furnishes the epicure with as 
great a variety of piscatorial delicacies as any waters in 
the world, these do not include oysters, and further that 
the birds which are to be seen in such numbers flitting 
to and fro along its shores, so far from being joyful 
visitants, are of a particularly mournful species known 
locally as the "souls of the damned" and reputed to 
embody the spirits of drowned miscreants. 

We can, however, easily forgive the old writer's 
pretty bit of extravagance, for the subject which inspired 
it has, in truth, hardly an equal in the world. Its seven 



26 



The Old Seraglio 



hills crowned with minarets and mosques, its graceful 
slopes falling away to the water's edge, its many cypress 
groves and the sparkling girdle which the Marmora 
and Golden Horn throw three-parts around it form a 
truly exquisite ensemble. 

Such a spot is, as Sandys felicitously puts it, a seat 
of sovereignty, " by destinie appointed and by nature 
seal'd"; in proof of which the city has never ceased to 
harbour an Emperor for the last seventeen centuries. 

The Byzantine emperors had their marble and por- 
phyry palaces high up on the hill, but the Ottoman 
Sultans built theirs down by the water's edge on a small 
promontory jutting into the Sea of Marmora. Here a 
vast rambling conglomeration of courtyards and kiosks 
set among woods and gardens and surrounded by a 
formidable wall three miles in circumference gave them 
complete seclusion from the vulgar gaze of the populace. 
Sandys during his visit to Constantinople in 1 6 10 gained 
admittance to the Serai which he describes as follows : 
" The space within comprehendeth goodly groves of 
cypresses intermixed with plaines, delicate gardens, 
artificell fountaines, all varietie of fruit trees and what 
not rare ; luxury being the steward and the treasure in- 
exhaustible. The proud Pallace of the Tyrant doth 
open to the South, having a loftie gate-house ingraven 
with Arabick characters set forth with gold and azure 
all on white marble. This leadeth into a spacious court 
300 yardes long and about half as wide, on the left hand 
whereof stands the round of an ancient Chappell con- 
taining the armes that were taken from the Graecians 
in the subversion of the Citie, and at the farre end of 
this court a second gate hung with shields and cymitars 
doth lead into another full of tall cypress trees. The 



A perilous pleasaunce 



27 



Cloysters about it are leaded above and paved with 
stone, the roof supported with columnes of marble having 
copper chapters and bases. On the left hand the Divan 
is kept where the Bassas of the Porte do administer 
justice, and on that side confined with humble buildings ; 
beyond which court there is a stretch of kitchens. On 
the left is a stable large enough for 500 horses. Out of 
this second court there is a passage with a third not by 
Christians ordinarily to be entered, surrounded with the 
royal buildings which, though perhaps they come short 
of the Italian for contrivement and finenesse yet not in 
costly curiousnesse. Between the East wall and the water 
a sort of terrible Ordnance are planted which threaten 
destruction to such as by sea shall attempt a violent 
entrie. Without, on the North side stands the Sultan's 
Cabinet in form of a summer house, having a private 
passage of waxed linen from his seraglio where he often 
solaceth himself with the various objects of his harem 
and from thence takes barge to passe unto the delight- 
fulle places of adjoyning Asia." 

These " delicate gardens" with their well kept par- 
terres of roses, tulips and ranunculus are mentioned 
with admiration by most writers on Constantinople. 
Foreign travellers however who succeeded in bribing 
their way past the Guardians of the Gate, were apt to 
find their visits spiced with a good bit of excitement. 
Instant decapitation was at least a possible result of 
meeting with the palace eunuchs when they were es- 
corting the harem ladies through the grounds, and one 
writer tells how he and several Turks who were with 
him, finding themselves suddenly face to face with a 
fair, but well-guarded sultana, only escaped with their 
lives by imitating the gardeners in Alice in Wonderland 



28 



The Old Seraglio 



when the Red Queen made her appearance, and throwing 
themselves flat on their faces till the lady and her com- 
panions had passed. 

All the Sultan's gardens were in the charge of the 
Head Gardener, the Bostanji Bashi, who had ten 
thousand under-gardeners beneath him. The functions 
of this dignitary extended far beyond the cultivation of 
his flower beds ; indeed he ranked as one of the highest 
officers of State, being more or less in the position of 
a Lord High Chamberlain. There are even several 
instances in Ottoman history of the Head Gardener 
marrying the Sultans daughter. The enormous number 
of his underlings is an example of the lavish way in 
which the imperial household was staffed. An Italian 
book, written in 1470, gives the following table showing 



the pay-roll: 

" Cooks 50 

Sweet-makers 30 

Carpet layers 60 

Door keepers 250 

Grooms 1 50 

Kennelmen 2000 
Ditto for pet-dogs 600 

Falconers 200" 



These figures show the number of the personnel 
at a period — only fifty years after the conquest of 
Constantinople — when the extravagance of the court 
was very far short of reaching the scale it did under 
succeeding sultans, and a century later the numbers 
were certainly many times greater. 

Among the most peculiar features of the Turkish 
court was the method of recruiting and training the 
court officials. The janissaries, whom I shall have 



Training of an ich-oghlan 29 



occasion to describe in greater detail when dealing with 
the army, were primarily intended to furnish fighting 
men, but a certain proportion of them were educated 
for the public services and the Sultan's own employ. 
They were the sons of Christian rayahs ravished from 
their homes at the age of ten under the cruel system of 
human tithe which the Turks initiated at an early date, 
and were trained for their vocation in life in a special 
college standing within the grounds of the imperial 
palace. 

The early career of one of these lads, who were 
known as ich-oghlans or " house boys," was very far from 
enviable. After being initiated into the Moslem faith 
he was put into the college and started on a course of 
probationary training of the most rigorous nature con- 
ceivable. He was bastinadoed for the slightest fault 
and systematically bullied by the ill-tempered eunuchs 
who had charge of the pupils. During their six years 
novitiate the probationers never once left the confines 
of the palace but spent their time acquiring a general 
education designed to inculcate good manners, accuracy 
and honesty. Humility was the keynote of the system 
and — to borrow from M. Tournefort's book of Turkish 
travels — the inmates of the college were " bred in ex- 
emplary modesty and taught above all to remain silent, 
keep their eyes lowered and their arms folded across 
their breasts." This last describes the typical attitude 
assumed at all times by the janissaries when in the 
presence of their superiors. 

At the end of the first period the pupils entered 
upon a second course or, to use the Turkish phrase, 
into the second " Chamber," where they studied Turkish, 
Arabic and Persian literature and had instructors to teach 



30 



The Old Seraglio 



them dart-throwing, pike and lance drill and equitation. 
Four more years brought them to the third and last 
Chamber where they acquired the gentler arts of 
music, needlework and embroidery, arrow-splicing, 
hair-dressing and manicure, valeting and the care and 
treatment of birds and pet dogs. In this Chamber they 
were allowed more freedom, but in the lower two they 
were kept under the sternest discipline and could not 
even talk together except at certain fixed times of the 
day. 

Only a fraction of the boys who entered at the 
bottom completed the whole course. Many were elimin- 
ated after the first Chamber and passed straight into 
the ranks of the fighting janissaries. Of those who 
reached the middle Chamber some would be allotted 
to mediocre posts without further training, becoming 
for instance clerks in the Treasury or servers in the 
palace laboratory, where among other duties they had 
to mix the Sultan's liquors and cordials. 

Only aspirants to the higher offices continued into 
the third Chamber — barely one-tenth of each batch. 
Its members were a privileged class and discarded the 
plain clothes of the novice for a sumptuous dress of 
satin brocade or cloth of gold. When proficient in the 
accomplishments taught in that Chamber, they were 
appointed to various posts in the Sultan's personal suite, 
such as his sword-bearer, stirrup-knight, master of the 
wardrobe, barber and manicurist, turban-valet or keeper 
of the pet dogs. A few chosen youths acted as pages. We 
are told that Suleyman I had six of these, two of whom 
were always with him both by day or night. Every 
morning a page filled two purses, one with a thousand 
silver aspers, the other with twenty ducats of gold, and 



From Page to Grand Vizir 31 

strapped them to his master's waist. With this fund 
Suleyman met the current needs of the day, and what- 
ever was left over at night became the perquisite of the 
lucky page who undressed him. While he was awake 
the two lads waited at his side, and when he slept they 
stood with torches at the head and foot of his bed. 

By a custom, which at first sight seems more typical 
of a Gilbertian play than of real life, the ministers of 
state and high functionaries of the empire were commonly 
selected from among these royal lackeys and it was no 
unusual thing for a favourite ick-oghlan to leave his duties 
as parer of the Sultan's nails for the governorship of a 
province. In point of fact, though, the long and very 
liberal course of education which these Christian boys 
went through before they graduated from the janissaries' 
college probably made them fitter candidates for public 
posts than any Turks in the empire, and the system 
was certainly no worse than that which obtained in Euro- 
pean countries. The difference in systems illustrates, 
by the way, a peculiar feature of Turkish society — the 
entire absence of the "hereditary principle." In Turkey 
a great man could bequeath to his son neither title nor 
honours so that he had no better claim to position 
and rank than the son of a beggar. Most of the Grand 
Vizirs rose from the ranks and had begun life as 
porters or cowherds or in some other equally lowly 
state of life, and a pasha's " tails" were well within the 
reach of even a black eunuch. The sultanate itself did 
not descend by right from father to son but passed on 
a sultan's death to the doyen of the royal family, though 
it is true that the golden rule of killing off all possible 
rivals left little distinction in effect between the Turkish 
system and the commoner one of primogeniture. 



32 



The Old Seraglio 



But to return to the subject from which we have 
wandered, the ich-oghlans whom I have just described 
had humbler brethren known as ajami oghlans. This 
class was drawn from the same source and reared on 
the same general principles, but their training was 
shorter and confined to bodily exercises ; they lived also 
in meaner quarters, in sheds along the shore and were 
clad — like Christ's Hospital boys — in a dress of dark 
blue and yellow. 

When they left school they were employed in sub- 
ordinate posts as chaoushes, capujis, gardeners, cooks, 
grooms, huntsmen etc., or,in the case of a favoured few, 
as archers of the guard or rowers in the Sultan's caique. 
The capujis, or door-keepers, who were a not unimpor- 
tant class, provided a guard of 1 5 men at each door of 
the Seraglio, where they levied heavy blackmail on 
foreign ambassadors visiting the Porte. The chaoushes 
were primarily footmen and couriers (the Chaoush Bashi 
was incidentally Grand Master of Ceremonies), but 
their occupations were numerous and varied and they 
acted generally as men-of-all-trades. Not the least un- 
common of their multifarious duties was to travel under 
the Sultan's orders to the province of an objectionable 
Pasha and return with his head (pickled) in a bag. 

This mention of the executioner's profession brings 
us to the palace mutes, the high priests of that gentle 
art. Highly placed victims, such as Vizirs who had 
fallen from favour, were alone honoured with their 
attentions. The technique of that peculiarly Turkish 
institution the bowstring was highly developed at the 
Porte and in the hands of a skillful operator the most 
taciturn subjects could be made to part with their inner- 
most secrets before the fatal twist. The process of 



A Royal Present 33 

persuading a dumb man to speak doubtless held special 
attractions for the tongue-tied executioner himself! 

Much more could be added about the Sultan's court 
and its surroundings, but these abstract descriptions are 
apt to pall and the reader will doutless be better pleased 
to pass on at once to the narrative of an Englishman 
who was himself an actor in the scenes he describes. 
Master Thomas Dallam is our man — an organ-builder 
in Queen Elizabeth's reign. How a gentleman of his 
craft should, in the pursuance of his profession, find 
himself in the awesome presence of the " Grand Turke" 
himself would certainly seem a mystery. Let me solve it 
by explaining the circumstances. At a certain point in her 
struggle with Philip, Elizabeth harboured the notion of 
a Turkish alliance. The Ottoman fleet, though well 
past its prime, could do much to embarrass the Spaniards, 
and the Queen went so far as to appeal to Mohammed III 
for assistance in the name of religion, on the grounds 
that Moslem and Protestant were united in their hatred 
of " image-worshippers." She thought well, however, 
to back up the appeal with a more material argument 
and so arranged with the Levant Company — then a 
close corporation for trading with Turkey — for the 
purchase and despatch to Constantinople of a gift to 
the Sultan in the form of an organ. 

Dallam, who had just finished the erection of the 
organ in Kings' College, Cambridge, was entrusted with 
the work and in the year 1599 the organ was completed 
(it was the Levant Company, one need hardly men- 
tion, who had to pay for it!) and, having been packed 
in sections, was shipped together with Dallam to 
Constantinople. 

The room in the Seraglio which was set aside for 



34 



The Old Seraglio 



the erection of the instrument was a beautiful kiosk with 
walls of porphyry topped by a course of lattice work 
fitted with awnings to moderate the heat and a fish pond 
in the centre with silk carpets all round. It had — so 
Dallam at any rate was made to believe — been specially 
constructed as a theatre for the strangling of members 
of the royal family, for whose comfort in their last 
moments these pleasant features were considerately pro- 
vided. Here in the course of a week or two Dallam 
reconstructed his organ and a day was fixed for the 
Sultan to come and hear it play. The instrument had 
an automatic arrangement by which it could be made 
to play like a musical box and Dallam, after setting the 
clockwork to go off at the appropriate moment, was 
made to wait outside. The Sultan arrived and the organ 
performed its tricks ; first it struck twenty-two times, 
then followed a chime of sixteen bells, after which it 
played a four-part song and, as a grand finale, two 
figures with silver trumpets lifted them to their lips and 
played a fanfare, while a nestful of wooden blackbirds 
and thrushes set in a holly bush at the top of the machine 
flapped their wings and sang a chorus. This pyrotechnic 
display greatly pleased Mohammed, and Dallam was 
summoned into his presence. Let him from this point 
take up the narrative himself: 

"When I came within the Dore that which I did 
see was verrie wonderful unto me. I came in direcktly 
upon the Grand Sinyori's ryghte hande, but he would 
not turne his head to louke upon me. He satt in greate 
state, yeate the sighte of him was nothinge in Com- 
parison of the traine which stoode behind him and 
made me almost to thinke that I Was in another worlde. 
I stood dazlinge my eyes with loukinge upon his 



A Delicate Performance 



people, the which was 4 hundrethe persons in number. 
200 weare his principall padgis appareled in ritche clothe 
of goulde made in gownes to the midlegge, upon their 
heades litle caps ; greate peeces of silke abowte their 
wastes ; upon their legges reade Cordovan buskins. 
Theire heades weare all shaven savinge that behind 
their eares did hange a locke of hare like a squirel's 
taile. They weare very proper men and Christian born. 

"The third hundred were Dum men who could 
neither heare nor speake and they likewise in riche 
clothe of golde but theire caps weare of violet velvett, 
the crowne of them made like a lether bottell, the brims 
divided into 5 peaked corners. Some had hawkes on 
theire fistes. 

"The fourth hundred weare all dwarffes, big-bodied 
men but very low of stature; everyone did weare a 
simmetare by his side. 

" When I had stode nearly \ of an houre behouldinge 
this wonderful syghte I heardethe Grand Sinyori speake 
unto the Cappagan (viz. Capuji) who then came to me 
and touke my cloake from aboute me and layed it downe 
upon the carpetes and bid me go playe on the organ ; 
but I refused because the Grande Sinyori satt so neare 
that I coulde not come at the place and muste needes 
turne my backe towards him and touche his knee with 
my britchis, which no man in paine of deathe myght 
doo save only the Cappagan. 

" So he smyled and let me stande a litle. Then the 
Grand Sinyori spoake again and the Cappagan with a 
merrie countenance bid me go with goode curridge and 
thruste me on. 

"When I came verrie neare the Grand Sinyori I 
bowed my heade as low as my knee and turned my 

I 



36 



The Old Seraglio 



backe righte tow him. He satt so righte behind me 
that he could not see what I did ; Therfor he stoode 
up and the Cappagan removed his chaire to one side 
wher he myghte see my handes, but in his risinge from 
his chaire he gave me a thruste forwardes and I thought 
he had bene drawinge his sorde to cut off my heade. 

" I stood thar playinge suche things as I could un- 
till the cloke strouke. Then I went close to the Grande 
Sinyori againe and bowed myself and wente backwardes 
to my Cloake. When the Company saw me theye 
seemed to be glad and laughed. Then the Grande 
Sinyori put his hande behind him full of goulde which 
the Cappagan receved and brought unto me fortie and 
five peeces and then was I put out againe wheare I 
came in beinge not a litle joyfull of my good suckses." 

Left to the tender mercies of the Turks, the organ, 
needless to relate, soon went out of order and Dallam 
was called in again to repair it. While at work on the 
repairs he made friends with some of the ajami oghlans, 
who did their best to persuade him to turn Turk and 
stay at Constantinople, in which case " they toulde me 
the Grand Sinyori would give me two wyfes of the 
beste I coulde chuse myselfe in cittie or countrie." To 
escape their blandishments Dallam, who actually was 
a bachelor, had to invent a wife and family at home in 
England to whom, he said, the bonds of natural affection 
forced him to return. 

One day his palace friends took Dallam all round 
the palace. They came in the course of their tour to 
a blank wall with a small iron grille in it which they 
told him to look through, though they would not them- 
selves go near. On looking he saw thirty or forty per- 
sons playing at ball. " At the firste syghte of them I 



TURKISH LADY IN INDOOR DRESS 
From George Sandys' Travels, 1632 



Spying on the Ladies 37 

thoughte they had bene yonge men, but when I saw 
the hair of theire heades hange doone on their backes 
platted with a tasle of small pearles and by other plaine 
tokens I did know them to be women and verrie prettie 
ones in deede. 

"They wore a litle capp which did but cover the 
crowne of the heade, faire chaines of pearls and juels in 
their ears, coats like a souldier's mandilyon some of red 
sattan and som of blew, britchis of fine clothe made of 
coton woll as whyte as snow and as fine as lawne. Som 
did weare fine cordovan buskins and som had their leges 
naked with a goulden ring on the smale of her legg, on 
her foute a panttoble 4 or 5 inches hie. I stoode so long 
loukinge upon them that he which had brought me be- 
gan to be verrie angrie with me and made a wrye mouthe 
and stamped with his foute to make me give over 
loukinge ; the which I was verrie lothe to dow, for the 
sighte did please me wondrous well." 

He subsequently learnt that he had been watching 
the ladies of the Sultan's own harem, an offence only to 
be expiated by instant death or worse. 

One last adventure befell our organ-builder before 
he left Constantinople. He had nearly completed the 
repair of the organ but still had some of the pipes spread 
on the floor of the kiosk when his Turkish assistants 
suddenly and without any explanation bolted. " By 
chance," he writes, " I called to my drugaman and asked 
him the cause. He said the Grande Sinyori and his 
conquebines weare cominge and we must be gone in 
paine of deathe. Then they all ran away and lefte me 
behinde and before I gott out of the house they had run 
over the greene quit out of the gate and I ran as fast 
as my leges would carrie me after and 4 neagers or 




38 



The Old Seraglio 



blackamoors came runninge towards me with their 
semetars drawne; if they coulde have catchte me they 
would have hewed me all in peecis. When I cam to 
the wickett there stood a greate number of jemoglans 
prayinge that I mite escape the handes of those runninge 
wolves and when I was got out of the gate they were 
verrie juyfull that I had so well escaped." 

Having accompanied Dallam so far, let us see him 
safe home again to his native town. He fell seriously 
ill after his fright from the eunuchs with the ' ' semetars" 
and his boat had to sail from the Golden Horn without 
him. He recovered sufficiently to follow a few weeks 
after in another English merchantman and though in 
a parlous state during most of the voyage was almost 
restored to health when at length they reached England. 
Full of satisfaction at having faithfully accomplished the 
task on which he had set out months before, he welcomed 
the sight of the English coast. "Then," he concludes, 
"we wente ashore at Dover and our trompetes soundinge 
all the waye before us into the towne where we made 
ourselves as merrie as could. So at tow of the Clocke 
we touke poste horse to Canterburie and from thence to 
Rochester that nyghte and the nexte day to London." 



CHAPTER III 

THE SULTAN'S ARMIES 

The Sultan's armies comprised five principal branches 
— first and foremost the janissaries, then the feudal 
troops, the spahis and piadds, thirdly the artillery, 
fourthly the irregular troops, azabs, akinjis and the rest, 
and lastly the Tartar auxiliaries. 

All of them are interesting and picturesque, but 
none so much as the janissaries, that wonderful corps 
of which an eminent writer has said that "it was one of 
the most remarkable bodies the world has ever seen, 
and goes far to explain the character of the early Otto- 
man Empire — that wild brilliancy and vigour in which 
no ordinary ideas of humanity, morality or economy 
find a place." 

Tradition places the foundation of the corps in the 
reign of Sultan Orkhan, who succeeded Sultan Osman 
(founder of the Ottoman nation) and flourished 200 years 
before the capture of Constantinople. 

Several causes combined to bring it to birth. The 
Ottomans were hopelessly unable — both from their lack 
of assimilative power and the rapidity of their progress — 
to digest their conquests in Europe and Asia, and the 
numbers and strength of their subject populations became 
a serious problem. Conversion to Islam was an obvious 
remedy and in seeking methods of encouraging this they 
hit on the janissary system. It was a brilliant solution 
from their own point of view, for it killed three birds at 



40 The Sultans A rmies 



least with a single stone. It formed a deadly inducement 
to Christian parents to abandon their faith for the sake of 
their children ; where this failed, it lessened the danger 
from the Christian element by removing the pick of 
each generation, and it provided ideal material for 
the Turkish armies. 

Its invention is credited by Turkish historians to 
one " Black Khalil," the Vizir of Sultan Orkhan, who 
suggested to his master that he should levy an annual 
tribute of one thousand children, selected at discretion, 
from the Christians under his power. The scheme was 
adopted and the boys were reft from their homes 
with the same ruthlessness as the victims of the Mino- 
taur, and forcibly initiated, by the customary rites, 
into Islam. The initiation was performed by a notable 
holy man, Hajji Bektash (founder of the Bektashi 
order of Dervishes which still flourishes in Turkey), 
who, we are told, blessed the neophytes by stretching 
his flowing sleeve above the head of their leader lying 
prostrate before him on the ground and pronouncing 
the following words: "Let these youths be called the 
Yeni Cheri (meaning the 'New Armies' and corrupted 
by European lips to 'Janissaries'); let their coun- 
tenance ever be bright, their hands victorious and their 
swords clean, and whithersoever they go, may they 
return always with a white face!" The corps adopted 
the peculiar mystic tenets taught by the Hajji and for 
centuries after preserved the memory of their baptismal 
day by wearing a piece of stuff, shaped like a miniature 
sleeve, attached to the peak of their caps. 

The janissaries were forbidden to marry, and passed 
their lives under a system of military discipline of the 
sternest imaginable nature. To quote from Sir Charles 




A JANISSARY 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations f aides en la Turquie, 1577 



In the Ranks 



4i 



Eliot, "they were thus a military religious order com- 
posed of men selected for physical and mental excellence, 
divorced more completely than any monk from all 
worldly ties of birth, marriage or profession, and en- 
couraged to give their vigour full and unscrupulous play 
subject to no law save that of unquestioning obedience 
to their superior officers. " The system produced, indeed, 
a corps oTdlite of incomparable fighters, and any fears 
which their founders may have entertained as to the 
standard of loyalty to be looked for from a body of forced 
converts were speedily dispelled when the young con- 
verts proved themselves capable of even fiercer acts of 
tyranny and oppression towards their own Christian rela- 
tions than the natural-born sons of the Prophet. In this 
way the Turks organized the first regular standing army 
which Europe had known since Roman times, and de- 
veloped it steadily until, by the time of Suleyman I, the 
corps reached a strength of 40,000. 

We have already, in the first chapter of this book, 
had a glimpse of the embryo janissary during his period 
of training in the seraglio. On leaving school he was 
posted to an orta or company, in which he usually re- 
mained for the rest of his life. This was a self-contained 
unit organized on such communistic lines as could not 
fail to win the approbation of the most uncompromising 
modern bolshevik. All pay and expenses were pooled, 
and contributions were levied from each member of the 
company to form a common purse which provided pen- 
sions for the sick and funds for general purposes. The 
principle of equality was carried so far that when issues 
of stores or equipment took place the distribution was 
made at night to prevent any possibility of favouritism. 
One writer asserts, though one hesitates to believe it, 



42 



The Sultans A rmies 



that even the armour captured from Christian troops 
(the Turks made none themselves and only used what 
they obtained in this manner) was deliberately parcelled 
out at haphazard, so that a janissary in the ranks could 
often be seen wearing an assortment of ill-fitting pieces, 
the original property of half-a-dozen Christians of vary- 
ing girth and stature. The supreme instance of the 
democratic foundation of the corps lay in the fact that 
the Sultan, though like the Czar he was "father" to 
every janissary, himself held the rank of a common 
private and drew his weekly pay accordingly. 

A curious feature among the janissaries was the 
regimental " stew-pot." These great cauldrons played 
a vital part in the life of the regiment; they were vene- 
rated as we venerate a regiment's colours, and were 
carried at the head of the column on all occasions, while 
a regiment which lost its cauldron in battle was dis- 
graced eternally. The cooks held a proud and important 
position in the corps and the prestige of the kitchen may 
be gauged by the strange title given to company com- 
manders, namely chorbaji or " soup-man." 

The janissary's hierarchy was a simple one. At the 
head was the Agha of the corps, who was accounted the 
third greatest man in the Empire. Under him were the 
commanders of buluks and jema'ats (the latter including 
the cavalry), distinguishable from each other only by the 
colour of their boots, red and yellow respectively. These 
units were subdivided into the ortas mentioned above, 
each of which was distinguished by an individual crest, 
such as for instance an anchor, embroidered on its stan- 
dard, painted above the barracks and frequently tattooed 
on the persons of its members. The janissaries were di- 
vided also into various 'arms', archers (sulaks), fusiliers 




THE AGHA OF THE JANISSARIES 

From Nicolay's Peregrinations faictes en la Tnrquie, 1577 



The Janissaries" Charter 



43 



(tufankjis), gunners (topjis), camelry etc, besides non- 
combatant branches such as the foresters. 

Side by side with the spirit of democracy there 
existed an iron discipline within the corps. On the first 
occasion that a batch of new janissaries entered the 
palace they filed past the Agha each holding on to the 
coat-tails of the man in front. The Agha gave every one 
as he passed a hearty smack in the face and a twitch of 
the ears and received in return a reverential salute from 
the victim as a token of loyal obedience. 

Absolute obedience to his superiors was indeed the 
first article of the janissary's charter which consisted — 
like another famous document — of fourteen points. The 
remaining thirteen were: (2) perfect harmony within 
the corps, (3) abstention from all things unbefitting a 
brave man, (4) adherence to the precepts of Hajji Bek- 
tash, (5) right to be recruited only in the established 
way, (6) in the case of men condemned to death for 
any misdeed, privilege of private execution by night and 
of a coup de canon at the moment when the body was 
thrown into the sea, (7) immunity from punishment 
by anyone except officers of the corps, (8) promotion 
by seniority, (9) pension for old age, (10) obligation 
to shave the chin, (11) celibacy, (12) prohibition to 
sleep outside barracks or (13) to follow a trade, 
(14) liability in peace time to take part in manoeuvres 
from June to November. 

The janissary's uniform was of dark blue cloth, 
plainly cut and comparatively free from ornamentation. 
Its simplicity was compensated for by the elaborate 
magnificence of their headdress. This consisted of a 
white felt hat shaped after the fashion affected by Marl- 
borough's Grenadiers, richly embroidered round the base 



44 



The Sultans A rmies 



and resolving itself behind into the sleeve-like append- 
age which commemorated their religious initiation; to 
the front was attached a gilt sheath encrusted with bas- 
tard stones and into this was stuck — if the wearer was 
a veteran soldier — a prodigious Bird-of- Paradise plume 
which fell in a magnificent curve down his back and 
reached nearly to the level of his knees. When stationed 
at Constantinople the janissaries carried silver-tipped 
batons some six feet long with which they performed 
summary execution on anyone found breaking the laws. 
A feature which distinguished them from the bearded 
Turks was their shaven chins. This was supposed to 
impart a fierceness of expression unattainable by the 
wearer of a beard, and the effect was further enhanced 
by the cultivation of long and ferocious moustaches. 

Of the functions of the janissaries one of the chief 
was to police the country, and under the great Sultans 
they were such efficient guardians of the peace that 
travellers reported the roads in Turkey to be as safe or 
safer than in any Christian country. Especially in the 
reign of Murad IV — the most bloodthirsty monster who 
ever donned the cloak and mantle of Osman — the pun- 
ishment of crime was so drastic and so sure that people 
said, as in days of Charlemagne, that a woman could 
carry a basket of jewels in safety from one end of the 
empire to the other. 

A foreigner of distinction, on entering the Turkish 
dominions, was given a small bodyguard of janissaries 
(a custom which survived until the beginning of the 
recent war in the privilege accorded to diplomatic 
and consular representatives to have a fixed number of 
armed cavasses attached to their persons), and a delight- 
ful sketch of one of these guards has come down to us 



The decay of the Corps 45 



in the memoirs of an old ambassador to the Porte, 
written in the middle of the sixteenth century. "The 
Janizaries," he says, "came to me by couples. When 
they were admitted into my dining-room they bowed 
their heads and made obeisance, and presently they ran 
hastily to me and touched either my garment or my hand, 
as if they would have kissed it ; and then forced upon 
me a bundle or nosegay of narcissuses, and presently 
retired backwards with equal speed to the door, that so 
they might not turn their backs on me, for that is ac- 
counted undecent by the rules of their order. At the 
door they bowed their heads again and wishing me all 
happiness, departed. The truth is, unless I had been 
told before they were Janizaries, I should have thought 
them to be some kind of Turkish monks, or Fellows of 
some College or other amongst them; yet these are the 
Janizaries that carry such terror with them wheresoever 
they go." 

As time went on the original strictness of the order 
became relaxed, and when celibacy ceased to be enforced 
the old method of recruiting from among the children 
of the Christian raiahs gave way to the custom of en- 
listing the sons of ex-janissaries. In these later days, 
under a series of weak and dissolute Sultans, the janis- 
saries followed in the footsteps of the Turkish Guards 
of the Baghdad Caliphs and the Mamelukes in Egypt 
though they never, like these, actually usurped the 
throne itself. Even in Suleyman's time the janissaries 
extorted higher pay by threats of mutiny or worse, and 
in the reigns of the next few Sultans their power grew 
to such an extent that no Vizir could be appointed 
without their sanction. By the middle of the seventeenth 
century they had become absolute arbiters of the Sultan's 



46 The Sultans A rmies 



fate and had been guilty three times over of the supreme 
sacrilege of assassinating their own Caliph, besides de- 
posing three others. Affairs by the end of the century 
had reached such a pass that an English traveller of the 
period writes of them, "the mortallest corruption of this 
Order hath set in of late yeares ; knowing their owne 
strength and growne saucy with familiarity at Court 
they have proceeded to such insolency as hath flesh'd 
them in the blood of their Sovereigns and have learnt 
that damnable Secret of making and unmaking their 
King at their pleasure whereby the Foundation of all 
Monarchy, that is the due awe towards the Blood Royall, 
is so irreparably decayed in them that, like the lost State 
of Innocence, it can never be restored." 

They had a peculiar method of their own for ex- 
pressing their discontent with the Government of the 
moment. When the huge bowls of rice which formed 
their daily rations were set out in the seraglio courtyard 
(as is described by the Italian diplomat from whose 
diary I quote in chapter iv), the Orta Bashis, instead 
of quietly carrying them to their messes, turned them 
upside down on the ground. This was a pretty sure 
omen of riot and bloodshed and woe betide the reign- 
ing Sultan when it happened. Not till early in the nine- 
teenth century did Turkey free herself from the incubus 
of these insolent tyrants, when that passionate reformer 
Mahmud II abolished the corps for good and all by the 
simple expedient of a wholesale massacre. 

The spahis and ftiadds, who, unlike the janissaries, 
were trueborn Turks, originated under much the same 
system as our own feudal troops. The Sultans, as they 
extended their conquests in Europe, parcelled out a 
large proportion of the conquered land into fiefs, or 



A " Spahi's " Marching Order 47 



tirnars, which they gave to their followers in recog- 
nition of special services in the field. The "timariot' 
held his land on much the same terms as a Norman 
baron, being bound to accompany his liege-lord when- 
ever he went to war, and to bring with him a quota of 
armed retainers proportionate to the size of his holding. 

The military equipment of a spahi riding to the 
wars has been detailed by an old English writer, whose 
description reminds one of nothing so much as John 
Tenniel's picture of the Red Knight. It reads as 
follows: — 

"First the girdle stuck with three or four pistols, 
then on each side a knife as long as a man's arm with 
another of a foot long for ordinary purposes tuck't into 
his coat ; an arquebus on his shoulder, and on his thigh 
a scymitar; on one side of the saddle a petronnelle, on 
the other a straight sword and, hanging by it, either a 
little axe or a Hungarian mace, or both. On his back 
bows and arrows." 

Truly a portentous outfit! 

The piadds need no particular description as they 
were recruited and served under practically the same 
conditions as the spahis, the difference being that they 
were foot soldiers. 

Of the artillery also there is not very much to say. 
Originally the Turks borrowed this arm from their 
Christian enemies, and for centuries the arsenals on the 
Bosphorus were under the charge of renegades. They 
developed it rapidly, however, as they did all instruments 
of war, and soon outpaced the original inventors, so that 
by the fifteenth century they were better equipped with 
heavy artillery than any of their rivals. The size of 
some of the guns was enormous. At the siege of Con- 



4 8 



The Sultans A rmies 



stantinople when guns were sent to the Bosphorus from 
Adrianople — then the capital of the Turks in Europe — 
teams of 150 yoke of oxen were used to haul single 
pieces. The batteries placed to guard the Narrows at 
the Dardanelles were notorious. An English diplomat 
w T ho visited them on his way to Constantinople in 1827 
declares that one of the cannon was of 2-foot calibre and 
threw a solid stone projectile weighing a quarter of a ton. 
No unworthy ancestor, forsooth, of the monstrous 
" Asiatic Annie" of evil memory. 

A considerable part of the Turkish army was made 
up of irregular troops. The chief of these were the azabs 
and akinjis, who, as cavalry and infantry respectively, 
played the role of "shock troops" and were mercilessly 
sacrificed in action in order to prepare the ground for 
a charge by the invincible janissaries. Another and very 
extraordinary corps were the volunteers known as delis 
{anglice 1 , " Mad- caps"), who, under the influence of re- 
ligious fanaticism, used to offer themselves for any par- 
ticularly desperate enterprise, and of whom it was said 
that not a single one had ever shown his back to the 
enemy, whatever the odds. The dress worn by these 
"Mad-caps" was of an outrageous design, intended, like 
the masks of the old Chinese warriors, to strike fear into 
the heart of the enemy. It consisted of a dolman and 
breeches made of a lion or bear skin with the hair turned 
outwards, and a bonnet of leopard's skin with a pair of 
eagle's wings sewn on in such a way as to stand upright 
on either side. Another pair of wings projected from 
their shields, so that the whole effect was that of a mov- 
ing mass of fur and feathers — even their horses being 
covered with the skins of various wild animals. Their 
usual weapons were a scimitar, a club and a long pike. 




A "MADCAP" 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations faictes en la Titrquie, 1577 



Untamed Tartars 



49 



The Tartar auxiliaries — the last of the five elements 
composing the Turkish armies — came from the Crimea 
and the northern shores of the Black Sea. The Tartars 
were hereditary allies of the Turks to whom they are 
related by religion, race and language. The Tartar 
Khans ', heirs-presumptive to the throne of Turkey in the 
event of the Ottoman dynasty becoming extinguished, 
were therefore bound to assist the Sultans with troops in 
all their campaigns against Christian nations. The bond 
was made doubly secure by the retention of the reigning 
Khans eldest son at the Sultan's court, where he lived as 
a permanent hostage for his father's loyalty. Hordes of 
Tartar cavalry accompanied the Turkish armies when 
they marched into Europe, and acted as scouts and 
skirmishers on the flanks. They were wild, undisciplined 
horsemen who spent their whole lives in the saddle and 
whose food was mare's milk, caviare and meat " cooked " 
by being placed in slabs under their horses' girths till it 
was bruised to a suitable state of tenderness. In enemy 
country they advanced in loose order ahead, and on the 
wings of, the regular army where they ambushed bodies 
of the enemy and pillaged and murdered with complete 
impartiality the inhabitants of the country and any un- 
fortunate stragglers from the ranks of their own allies. 
Their services were paid by a free licence to loot and to 
them fell the lion's share of the plunder. In a later page 
of the present volume we have a picture of them in 
action as given by an English gentleman who fought 
against them in the Polish wars. 



H. 



4 



CHAPTER IV 



A PALACE AUDIENCE 

At daybreak on Aug. 15, 1682, there was a great stir 
at the old Venetian bailaggio in Pera. H.E. Giorgio 
Battista Donado, Senator of Venice and Ambassador 
Plenipotentiary of the Most Serene Republic, was pre- 
paring for his first audience with the Sultan Mohammed 
IV which was to open the way to the resumption of 
amity between Turkey and Venice after the long in- 
terruption of the Candian war. 

The ambassador and his suite had, in point of fact, 
arrived at Constantinople more than a year before, but 
matters had been delayed by a hitch of a very typical 
character. For years past it had been the custom of the 
Grand Vizir, the notorious Black Mustafa, to levy a 
heavy tax upon each new ambassador on the occasion 
of his first presentation to the Sultan, and as all petitions 
for an audience passed through his hands the petitioners 
had no choice but to submit to the robbery. The proud 
senator, however, met these rapacious demands on his 
purse with an absolute refusal which enraged the Vizir 
and consequently barred his access to the palace. For- 
tunately the Sultan's favourite son-in-law, who suffered 
from a long-standing malady, had been cured by the 
embassy doctor and showed his gratitude by befriending 
his master. A short cut to the emperor's ear was thus 
found. Mohammed, yielding to the persuasion of his 
favourite, agreed to receive the ambassador and the 
arrangements for the audience were complete. 



The start 



5i 



Now that the day had arrived, everything was 
ordered in the finest style and with that degree of pomp 
and circumstance which the stately traditions of Venice 
demanded. As soon as it was light the subordinate staff 
gathered in the large courtyard of the embassy where 
the major-domo was already parading the escort. The 
latter consisted of an Albanian bodyguard, a score of 
Croatian couriers resplendent in crimson liveries, twelve 
chamberlains in dresses of orange satin cut in the 
Turkish fashion and an equal number of grooms in 
pearl-coloured silk leading the horses ; the usual guard 
of janissaries attached to a foreign ambassador to the 
Porte completed the party. 

Soon the ambassador himself appeared followed by 
his " household," that is to say his secretaries, chaplains, 
physician, surgeon, man-of-law and dragomans. These 
last included several young men from the special school 
at Venice where youths were taught the Turkish 
language and trained for the duties of diplomatic 
dragoman in Turkey. The name of one of these was 
Antonio Benetti and it is to his memoirs 1 that we are 
indebted for this account of the proceedings. 

When all was ready the little party, augmented 
now by a contingent of the better class merchants be- 
longing to the Venetian colony, left the bailaggio and 
riding down the steep cobbled street which leads through 
Galata — the ancient Genoese quarter — reached the 
edge of the Golden Horn. There was no " Galata 
Bridge" in those days, but a fleet of caiques was drawn 
up at the water's edge waiting to ferry them across to 
Stambul. These delicate craft, built like a flat-hulled 
gondola with a cushioned space amidships for the passen- 

1 Viaggi a Constantinopoli, published at Venice in 1688. 

4—2 



52 



A Palace Audience 



gers, are the typical pleasure-boat of the Bosphorus and 
the most graceful things afloat. A special boat with 
fourteen rowers, gilded woodwork and velvet hangings, 
its cushions covered with gold-lace antimacassars, carried 
the ambassador across followed by his party in smaller 
caiques and their horses in clumsier built mailnas. 

The Chaoush Bashi — the Grand Master of Cere- 
monies — was waiting to receive them on the further 
shore, and after the usual salutations a procession was 
formed to march to the palace. Fifty picked mounts 
from the royal stables had been sent, with the Master 
of the Horse, for the use of the ambassador and his staff, 
and their own beasts which they had brought with them 
were led riderless, in obedience to a curious Turkish 
custom, at the head of the procession. It was a glittering 
cavalcade that wound its way first through the wharves 
and ship-building yards, then through the covered 
bazars and up the narrow streets which mount the first 
of Stambul's seven hills. The splendid figure of the 
Venetian senator in his dress of crimson taffetas faced 
with gold brocade and lined with ermine riding alone 
behind the Chaoush Bashi with a bostanji walking on 
either side and followed by his staff clad in the fashion 
of their day in tight juste-au-corps brought even the 
impassive Turkish populace flocking to the route, and 
the close-packed shingle houses with their projecting 
bays of lattice-work were crowded with onlookers 
curious to see the envoy of their great maritime rival. 

Having reached the open space in front of Santa 
Sofia the procession turned in at the main gate of the J 
seraglio, passing through a large archway under a gate- 
tower which broke the massive line of the walls and 
gave entrance into the first court of the royal palace. 



A scene in the courtyard 



53 



This court, which was of huge dimensions, served as a 
parade-ground for the household troops and as it marked 
the limit beyond which no horses were allowed to pass, 
the cortege dismounted and leaving their horses with 
those of the Vizirs who had already arrived continued 
towards the second court on foot. 

Sitting on a bench within the gate-way separating 
the two courts was the Agha of the janissaries with 
twenty-eight of his colonels in their pointed brocade 
hats with three large white plumes and three smaller 
black ones set fan-wise in front, together with the com- 
mander of the spahis with a group of his principal 
officers in brilliant uniforms of green satin and cloth-of- 
gold. 

After exchanging salutes with both these military 
" big-wigs," Donado and his following passed on 
into the inner court. Here they found themselves in a 
wide expanse surrounded on all sides by cloisters and 
containing a grassy park dotted about with clumps of 
trees under which tame stags and other beasts were 
grazing. The place was filled with some 8000 janis- 
saries passing the time in idle amusements. 

As they walked along a path leading across the park 
they were startled to hear a number of the janissaries 
suddenly raise a terrific shout and dash tumultuously 
towards a corner of the court thundering like a charge 
of cavalry, with their heavy iron-shod shoes rattling on 
the stone paving of the cloisters. At first they feared 
that an outburst of fanaticism had been let loose against 
them, but were soon reassured when they saw that the 
object of this furious onslaught was nothing but a row 
of tin cans which had just been brought into the court 
and set down on the stones of the cloisters. The cans 



54 



A Palace A udience 



were full of rice and chicken broth and contained the 
janissaries' dinner. The scene which ensued is best 
described in Benetti's own language which I will 
render as nearly as I can into English: "Then these 
barbarians began to gobble their food, silencing their 
tongues meanwhile but making a deafening clatter as 
they beat the tins with their hands, and all the time they 
ate so ravenously that they beslobbered their faces all 
over, and in less time than it takes to light a candle 
every drop of the soup had vanished." 

On the side of the court furthest from the gateway 
by which our friends had entered stood the divan 
chamber. The divan was an early Turkish institution 
nearly resembling our cabinet meetings, being a con- 
ference of the principal Ministers of State to discuss 
all important matters of government. Originally an 
informal council of the Sultan and his chief officers, it 
had become stereotyped as time went on, and at the 
period of which we are speaking was a regular assembly, 
meeting two or three times a week, of certain of the 
highest officials including the two Cadileskers (the Chief 
Justices respectively of Europe and Asia), the Treasurer- 
General and the Vizirs responsible for finance, justice 
and foreign affairs. The president of the divan was the 
Grand Vizir. In earlier days it had been the Sultan; 
but the story goes that an Anatolian rustic entering one 
day to ask for justice in some trivial affair and wishing 
to make his plea in the highest quarter, shouted in 
his rough peasant way kiminez padishah dir, "which of 
you there is the Sultan?"; whereafter in order to avoid 
further offences of the sort against his royal dignity the 
Sultan ceased to attend the divan and deputed the 
Grand Vizir in his stead. 




A CADILESKER 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations f aides en la Turqnie, 1577 



The divan chamber 



55 



Turkish procedure required that before the per- 
sonal audience the ambassador should be presented to 
the divan, so His Excellency, leaving his followers in 
the court, advanced alone to the chamber, bowing pro- 
foundly to the door of the royal apartments which he 
passed on the way as sailors salute the quarterdeck on 
a man-o'-war. Entering, he greeted the Grand Vizir 
— whom his chief dragoman, sent on ahead for the 
purpose, had already placated to some degree with 
handsome presents — and was offered, in deference to 
European habits, a chair to sit on. 

The divan chamber was a large square room roofed 
with a dome painted with flowers in the gaudy rococo 
style much admired by the Turk, which terribly ruins 
the interior harmony of some of the finest mosques in 
Stambul. Three large windows gave light to the room 
and a couple of feet above the head of the Grand Vizir 
as he sat cross-legged on the dais was a little gilt grille 
with silk curtains, behind which the Sultan sat when he 
wished to hear, or take part in, the proceedings of the 
council. Copies of the Koran, the Bible and the Talmud 
lay ready to hand for use in "swearing in" witnesses 
when called to give evidence at a meeting. All the 
members of the divan were present, ten in all, including 
the Cadileskers, while the Defterdar or Minister of 
Finance, the Chaoush Bashi and the head of the Capujis 
or Door-keepers were also in attendance, 

A curious little ceremony was being enacted at the 
moment that the ambassador arrived. The Grand Vizir 
had just affixed his seal to an order on the Treasury for 
a large sum for the payment of the troops which he 
handed to the chief Capuji to take to the Sultan for 
his ratification. The Capuji, kissing his hand, took the 



56 



A Palace A udience 



paper and carried it out of the room, holding it at the 
height of his shoulder. He soon returned from the royal 
apartments now holding the paper, sanctified by the im- 
perial tughra, on a level with his head, all the Vizirs 
rising from their seats and bowing profoundly as he 
passed. The Grand Vizir received back the order with 
every mark of reverence, kissing the document and 
laying it on his bowed head before proceeding to open 
the seal and read it out to the company. As soon as 
he had done so, chaoushes appeared carrying 800 purses 
of gold which were counted and checked in the presence 
of all by the Paymaster-General. The janissary chor- 
bajis then entered to draw the pay for their various 
"chambers." They first went up to the Grand Vizir 
and kissed the hem of his cloak — a performance made 
somewhat difficult by the enormous plumes in their hats, 
to avoid thrusting which into the Grand Vizir's face 
they had to contort themselves to most unnatural angles. 
Afterwards they stood in a row while the Defterdar 
handed to each the appointed number of purses, on re- 
ceiving which the officer retired outside and called the 
men of his chamber to carry them to their quarters, 
whereupon — to the great entertainment of Benetti and 
his companions — a scramble ensued, even wilder than 
the rush for the soup-cans, those in front slipping on 
the flagstones and tripping those behind so that in a 
minute the ground was covered with struggling janis- 
saries and littered with their shoes and plumed hats. 

To return to the proceedings within the divan, the 
distribution of pay being over, the next item on the 
agenda was taken, consisting of the bestowal of a fur- 
lined dress of honour (the Turkish equivalent of an 
"O.B.E.") on the Defterdar and the Head of the 



A Gargantuan feast 57 



Customs. With the decoration of these two officials, 
the formal business of the divan, of which the am- 
bassador had to remain a passive spectator, was finished 
and preparations were made for a banquet in his honour. 
Some cloths were laid on the floor and the ambassador's 
personal suite having been invited inside, they sat down 
to eat, the ambassador himself sharing a "table" on a 
raised dais with the Grand Vizir, his secretaries dining 
with the Cadileskers, the chaplains with the Defterdar 
and so on. On each u table" was placed a silver salver 
of huge dimensions raised on a short pedestal, and on 
this the sofrajis laid the dishes one by one, surrounding 
them with a circle of little platters full of all sorts of 
spices and condiments. The dishes themselves were 
made of a kind of rough porcelain with a slightly 
greenish hue reputed among the Turks to have the 
property of neutralizing any poison which might have 
insinuated itself into the viands. Each guest was 
provided with a napkin and a single spoon with a very 
long handle, their Turkish vis-a-vis dispensing of course 
with such superfluities. The number and variety of the 
courses is well-nigh incredible. One hundred and thirty 
dishes of fish, game, meat, risottos, savouries, sweets 
and ices succeeded each other in an endless procession, 
while varieties of sweet sherbets supplied the necessary 
liquid accompaniment. 

When this colossal repast was at length over and 
the diners' hands had been sprinkled with rose-water, 
the guests were led to a loggia outside the divan. Here 
a ceremony took place which formed the invariable 
prelude to an audience with the Sultan. Officials arrived 
with a number of handsome kaftans, or fur-lined cloaks, 
and threw them over the shoulders of the ambassador 



58 



A Palace A udience 



and those members of his suite who were to accompany 
him into the presence. Although this feasting and 
costly arraying of the guests were the outward and 
visible signs — or perhaps one should say, the conven- 
tional symbols — of the spirit of true hospitality which 
was firmly implanted in the Turks as in all other races 
of nomadic origins, the effect must have been a good 
deal discounted by the guests' knowledge of the real 
feelings of their hosts. Benetti, not unnaturally perhaps, 
lays but little stress on the undignified position of a 
Christian representative at the Porte and the boundless 
arrogance which he met with at court, but we can judge 
how it was by the following account, from another 
source, of the formula regularly used between the Grand 
Signior and his chief Vizir whenever a Christian am- 
bassador came to the palace for an audience. The Vizir 
would first announce the arrival of the envoy, where- 
upon the Sultan would reply, "feed and clothe the dog 
and bring him in to me." Sometime later, when the 
ambassador and his followers had been feasted and 
enveloped in kaftans in the way described above, the 
Vizir would return and say, "the infidel is fed and 
clothed and he now craves leave to lick the dusk beneath 
Your Majesty's throne," "then," answered the Sultan, 
"let the hound enter." 

The Venetian envoys, who were unaware, we will 
hope for the sake of their self-respect, of the insulting 
dialogue which had passed in relation to themselves, 
were now formed up into line and, preceded by the 
Grand Vizir, the Cadileskers and the other pashas of 
the divan, were ushered towards the audience chamber. 
Just as they passed the Guard of White Eunuchs, 
which stood at the door, they were fallen upon 



Into the Presence 



59 



by a number of capujis, two of whom gripped each of 
them under either arm and pushed, rather than led, 
them into the Sultan's presence. 

This seemingly erratic proceeding needs another 
short digression to explain it. On the day that the 
Turks defeated the Serbs on the field of Kossovo, 
Sultan Murad I was sitting in his tent just after the 
battle had ended when Milosh, a Serbian patriot, who 
saw that all hopes for his country had vanished, came 
to the tent and asked leave to address a petition to 
the Sultan. The Ottoman sultans in those early days 
were not hemmed around as they afterwards were, and 
the suppliant was allowed to enter. In an instant he 
drew a dagger which he had concealed on his person 
and stabbed the Sultan to death. Hence, by Turkish 
tradition, arose the custom of never allowing a stranger 
to enter the presence of the Sultan unless held by trusted 
attendants. Sceptical historians have, it is true, tried to 
discredit tradition and have traced the custom to a 
similar procedure current at the Byzantine courts; for 
myself, I prefer the Turkish derivation. 

Thus propelled like automata, and buried in their 
furs, the representatives of Venice entered the room 
where the Sultan awaited them. Round the room hung 
Persian carpets and in a corner stood the famous throne 
with its panels of beaten gold and magnificent pearl 
inlay. The throne was shadowed by a splendid canopy 
incrusted with rubies and sapphires and supporting a 
mesh of strings of pearls which hung round the Sultan's 
head, the portion immediately over him containing the 
largest pearls and ending in a fringe of emeralds. An 
overlay of fine-drawn gold wire set with glowing car- 
buncles adorned the arms of the throne. 



6o 



A Palace Audience 



Sitting in the midst of this splendour was the Grand 
Signior himself, his dress a blaze of precious stones of 
every description, while he wore on his head the im- 
perial headdress consisting of a small turban with 
a magnificent three-branched diamond tiara and an 
aigret feather in the centre. 

The Grand Vizir had taken up his post behind the 
Sultan where he stood with his eyes lowered as though 
unable to endure the dazzling radiance of the monarch, 
when the ambassador's attendants brought him to a 
halt three paces short of the throne. There, in accord- 
ance with the fixed procedure, he handed his creden- 
tials to a pasha standing by, who passed them to the 
Grand Vizir who, in his turn, laid them on the Sultan's 
knee. This done, he delivered a short set speech ex- 
pressing the desire of the Most Serene Republic to live 
thenceforward on terms of amity with the Ottoman 
Emperor and the hope that all causes of offence between 
the two Powers, in particular the inroads of the corsairs 
on Venetian shipping, having now been suppressed, 
both nations might reap the inestimable benefits of 
peace. 

The Sultan's reply to this eloquent oration consisted 
of two short words " Eutle olsun" "be it so!" and without 
further ado the ambassador was forcibly backed to the 
door and hustled out with his suite behind him. A 
military band of fifes and drums escorted them back 
to the embassy, followed soon afterwards by an army 
of servants carrying return gifts from the Sultan 1 . 

1 Benetti does not record the nature of the Venetian ambassador's gifts 
to the Sultan ; but it may not be out of place to quote the list of presents 
which Mr William Harebone, the first English ambassador to the Porte, 
took from Elizabeth to Murad III. They are as follows: "twelve fine 
broad clothes,two pieces of fine holland, tenne pieces of plate double gilt, 



An elaborate present 



61 



Thus were diplomatic relations restored between 



one case of candlesticks, the case thereof was very large, and three foot 
high and more, two very great Cannes or pots, and one lesser, one basin 
and ewer, two poppinjayes of silver, the one with two heads ; they were 
to drinke in : two bottles with chaines, three faire mastifs in coats of redde 
cloth, three spaniels, two bloodhounds, one common hunting hound, two 
greyhounds, two little dogges in coats of silke : one clocke valued at five 
hundred pounds sterling : over it was a forest with trees of silver, among 
the which were deere chased with dogs, and men on horsebacke following, 
men drawing of water, others carrying mine oare on barrowes : on the 
toppe of the clocke stood a castle, and on the castle a mill. All these 
were of silver. And the clocke was round beset with jewels." 




CHAPTER V 

AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE 

W 

In the year 1553 Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent 
was at truce with the Holy Roman Empire for almost 
the first time in more than a quarter of a century. He 
had inaugurated the most brilliant reign in Turkish 
history some thirty years before by crushing the forces 
of Hungary in the bloody battle of Mohacz, when 
King Louis with his entire company of bishops and 
knights had met their death in a vain, though heroic, 
charge against his invincible janissaries. Following up 
his victory he had pressed on through Hungary into 
the heart of Austria and laid siege to Vienna. For a 
moment the fate of Christendom had seemed to tremble 
in the balance ; but the tide turned and, failing to take 
the city, Suleyman had retired again to his own terri- 
tories after arranging a compromise with the Archduke 
Ferdinand, heir of King Louis, which left his own 
nominee, John Zapolya, on the Hungarian throne. 
Zapolya had died and an effort by the German armies 
to recover the lost dominions having ended in disaster, 
the truce had been signed between the Sultan, Charles 
the Fifth and the Archduke, Ferdinand binding him- 
self for the time being to recognise the Turkish claim 
over the greater part of Hungary and to pay a humili- 
ating tribute. 



A hurried departure 



63 



It was at this juncture of events that Malvezius, 
Ferdinand's ambassador, received from Suleyman pro- 
posals for a definite peace, and returned to Vienna 
with the terms in his pocket. He had just started back 
with Ferdinand's answer when he found himself 
suddenly laid low by a fatal disease contracted origin- 
ally during a two-years' incarceration in the Seven 
Towers to which he had been consigned some time 
before as the result of a fatuous attempt to hoodwink 
the Grand Signior. It is at this point that Busbequius, 
the hero of the following pages, enters upon the scene. 

Busbequius, whose Christian name was Andreas, 
was born in Flanders in 1522, being the bastard son 
of a nobleman who secured his legitimization by a 
special rescript of Charles V. His education was as 
liberal and cosmopolitan as could be desired for the 
training of an accomplished diplomat ; he had mastered 
a dozen languages at an early age and matriculated in 
turn at the Universities of Paris, Lou vain, Venice, 
Padua and Bologna. When he was twenty-one years 
of age he was attached by Ferdinand to a special 
embassy sent to London to represent him at the mar- 
riage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain. Returning 
from this mission he was surprised at Lille by an 
urgent despatch from Vienna appointing him to replace 
Malvezius as Imperial Ambassador of Constantinople. 
He left Lille on November 13, 1553, posted with all 
speed across the Continent, received his orders from 
the Emperor, snatched a bare two-days' interview with 
his dying predecessor, and hurrying on reached Gran, 
the Turkish frontier garrison on the Danube, in the 
first days of December, where he was met by a Turkish 
escort. At this point we will let Busbequius himself 



64 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

take up the narrative, quoting from the English trans- 
lation (published in 1694) of his Epistolae : 

" As soon as the Turks saw me to draw near," he 
says, " they rode up to me, and saluted me by my coach 
side : thus we passed on a while together, discoursing 
interchangeably one with another, (for I had a little 
Youth for my Interpreter.) I expected no other Convoy, 
but when we descended into a low Valley, I saw my- 
self on a sudden, surrounded with a Party of about 
a hundred and fifty Horse. It was a very pleasant 
Spectacle to a Man, unaccustomed to see such Sights, 
for their Bucklers and Spears were curiously Painted, 
their Sword-handles bedeck'd with Jewels, their Plumes 
of Feathers party-coloured, and the Coverings of their 
Heads were twisted with round Windings as white as 
Snow ; their Apparel was Purple-coloured, or at least 
a dark Blue ; They rode on stately Praunsers, adorn'd 
with most beautiful Trappings. Their Commanders 
came up to me, and after friendly Salutation they bid 
me Welcome, and asked me, How I had fared on my 
Journey ? I answered them as I thought fit ; and thus 
they led me to Gran." 

Busbequius's first experiences on Turkish soil were 
not very propitious. He soon found, somewhat to his 
disgust, that the Turkish conception of honouring a 
travelling guest was to provide the choicest stabling 
and fodder for the horses together with the most 
meagre board and lodging for their master, who was 
expected to content himself, according to local custom, 
with planks for his bed and an invariable diet of pillau for 
his stomach. The ambassadorial party were accom- 
modated at the free hostels scattered along the road 
which had been built and endowed by the Mother or 



Advice to Drunkards 



65 



sisters of the Sultan and his predecessors — the only 
persons privileged to indulge their charity in this shape 
— where a common hospitality was dispensed to all 
wayfarers alike, whether Moslem, Christian, Jew ; 
Pasha, merchant or mendicant. Another cause of much 
grumbling among Busbequius's retinue was the absence 
of wine in a Moslem country. The Ambassador him- 
self had taken care to provide an ample supply of good 
liquor for his own use, but as he kept a jealous eye on 
the flagons which filled the spare corners of his coach, 
his followers had to scour the villages far and wide in 
search of Christian wine vendors. Busbequius seems in 
this respect to have shown more liberality to strangers 
than to his own folk, for he describes a dinner party 
given to the local Turks at his first stopping place at 
which his guests found his wines so much to their 
liking that when he parted from them at midnight they 
lay round the table dead drunk to a man. Philosophis- 
ing on the subject of the Moslem attitude towards 
alcohol, he illustrates his point by one of the quaint 
little anecdotes which dot the pages of his letters and 
lend to them so much of their special charm. "At 
Constantinople " he writes " I saw an Old Man, who, 
after he had taken a Cup of Wine in his Hand to 
Drink, us'd first to make a hideous Noise ; I asked his 
Friends, Why he did so ? They answered me, that, by 
this Outcry, he did, as it were, warn his Soul to retire 
to some secret Corner of his Body, or else, wholly to 
Emigrate, and pass out of it, that she might not be 
guilty of that Sin which he was about to commit, nor 
be defiled with the Wine that he was about to guzzle 
down." 

An untoward incident occurred again on the arrival 
H - 5 



66 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

of the mission at Buda. The Turkish Governor of 
the town happening to be indisposed at the time sent 
to Busbequius and begged him to lend the services of 
his private physician, a gentleman bearing the some- 
what inauspicious name of Dr Quackquelben ; whether 
it was that the Turkish constitution baffled the good 
doctor's powers of diagnosis or through a stroke of 
sheer bad luck, the Pasha after swallowing the pre- 
scribed dose incontinently grew worse and on the 
following day came near to expiring ; it was only after 
the greatest efforts that the unfortunate physician pulled 
the patient round and so saved himself and his master 
from a grave suspicion of murder. 

Leaving Buda, Busbequius shipped his horses, 
coaches and all his " family " (as he calls his suite) on 
rafts on the Danube and proceeded downstream to 
Belgrade, as being not only the quickest route but also 
the most secure from attack by brigands. He presently 
found, however, that the risks of navigation on the 
Danube were at least as great as those of robbery on 
the roads, for the temerity of the Turks was such — he 
writes — that they would sally forth in the mistiest 
weather, the darkest night or the highest gale. The 
fairway was often blocked by water-mills or stumps of 
old trees and he was once awakened at midnight by 
the sound of splitting timbers to find that his raft 
(which was being towed by a 24-oared pinnace) had 
hurtled against some such obstacle. He implored the 
boatmen to have more regard for the safety of their 
passengers, but had to content himself with the laconic 
reply that their lives were in the hands of Allah and 
" he might go back to bed if he would." 

The journey through the Serbian vilayets occupies 



A Serbian Clytemnestra 67 



only a few pages of the ambassador's letters. His 
attention was chiefly attracted by the forests of poles 
which he saw planted in the churchyards as he passed, 
bearing pictures of stags, hinds and other fleet-footed 
animals. The explanation he received from the natives 
was that when a Serbian woman died, her husband or, 
if unmarried, her father, often erected a monument in 
this form to commemorate the alacrity and diligence 
which his wife or daughter had shewn in the execution of 
her household duties. In the passage through Bulgaria 
it was the costume of the peasant women that particu- 
larly caught his eye, which is not to be wondered at 
when we read the following description of their dress 
— though it is less easy to understand why the sight of 
these strangely apparelled females should have reminded 
him, as he affirms, of " Clytemnestra in the flourishing 
days of Troy." 

" I must not omit," says he, "to acquaint you with 
the Habit of these Bulgarian Women. They commonly 
wear nothing but a Smock or Shift, made of no finer 
Linnen-Thread, than that we make Sacks of. And yet, 
these coarse Garments are wrought by them, with 
several sorts of strip d Needle- work, after a homely 
Fashion. 

" But that which I most of all admired in them, was 
the Tower, which they wore on their Heads, for such 
was the Form of their Hats. They were made of Straw, 
braided with webs over them. In the space interjacent 
between their upper and lower Part, they hang Pieces 
of Coin, little Pictures or Images, small parcels of 
painted Glass, or whatever is resplendent, though 
never so mean, which are accounted very ornamental 
among them. 

5—2 



68 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

" Those kind of Hats makes them look taller, and 
also more matron-like, though they are easily blown 
off their Heads, by a Blast of Wind, or by any light 
Motion they fall off themselves." 

Early in the New Year Busbequius arrived at 
Constantinople, only to find that Suleyman had been 
called away from the capital by domestic disturbances 
and was in quarters four hundred miles away at Amadia, 
a town in Armenia lying between Sivas and the Black 
Sea port of Samsun. Letters were at once despatched 
to the Sultan announcing the arrival of Ferdinands 
ambassador and asking for instructions as to his move- 
ments. In the meantime Busbequius settled down to 
see the sights of the city and its surroundings. To the 
beauty of the landscapes amid which the city stands 
Busbequius appears to have been as blind as most of the 
writers of his time. He spares hardly a word for those 
incomparable harmonies of line and colour which have 
rejoiced the heart of those of us who, like the old 
Fleming, have been familiar with Stamboul's mosques 
and serais and old grey walls and have looked across 
from the wooded heights of Asia to its perfect con- 
tours of dome, minaret, battlement and tower blend- 
ing with the dark hillsides and the silvery gleam of the 
Bosphorus flowing below. 

The obsession for classical antiquities which marked 
the age in which Busbequius lived had, but a moderate 
hold on him. His letters contain brief sketches of the 
principal monuments dating from Byzantine days : 
Santa Sophia, the Hippodrome, the serpent pillar and 
the obelisk of Thothmes and he mentions en passant 
the collection which he made of Greek coins, describing 
especially his horrified indignation on finding that a 



The Sultans Zoo 



6 9 



brazier of Stamboul had, just before his arrival, melted 
down an entire roomful of antique coins and medals to 
make pots and pans. On the other hand, he took the 
keenest interest in all his living surroundings and 
never tires of describing the customs of his Christian 
and Moslem neighbours. A strong bent for natural 
history had led to his bringing with him an artist whose 
sole business it was to paint all the uncommon beasts 
and flowers met with on their travels. His own letters, 
however, contain as attractive sketches as any painter 
could give of the animals they met with on their travels, 
as an example of which let me quote a passage in which 
he describes a visit to the Sultan's private Zoo : 

"At Constantinople I saw several Sorts of Wild 
Beasts, such as Lynxes, Cat-a-Mountains, Panthers, 
. Leopards and Lyons ; but they were so gentle and 
tame that I saw one of the Keepers pull a Sheep out 
of a Lyon's mouth, so that he only moistened his Jaws 
with the Blood without devouring it. I also saw a 
young Elephant so wanton that she would dance and 
play at Ball. Sure you cannot chuse but laugh when 
I tell you of an Elephants dancing and playing at 
Ball ; but why may you not believe me as well as 
Seneca, who tells us of one that could dance upon a 
rope ? Or of Pliny, who speaks of another that under- 
stood Greek ? But that you may not think me an 
egregious Forger, give me leave to explain myself: 
When this elephant was bid to dance, she did so caper 
and quiver with her whole body, and interchangeably 
move her feet, that she seemed to represent a kind of 
jig ; and as for playing at Ball, she very prettily took 
up the Ball in her Trunk and sent it packing hither and 
thither as we do with the Palm of the Hand." 



70 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

The " Camelopardus " was, one gathers from con- 
temporary writings, a beast which excited a great deal 
of discussion among naturalists of the sixteenth century. 
Tales of travellers who had come across the giraffe in 
Africa were received with a good deal of scepticism 
on account of the unparelleled proportions attributed 
to the animal, and many of the scientific writers of the 
day affected to treat it as a fabulous monster. It must 
therefore have been a great disappointment to Busbe- 
quius that he just missed a chance of seeing one of 
these creatures in the flesh. She had lately been an 
inmate of the Zoo but had died shortly before his 
arrival at Constantinople ; in his ardent pursuit of 
science, however, Busbequius persuaded the Turks to 
disinter her and made an exhaustive anatomical exami- 
nation of the animal's remains. 

He indulges also in the favourite "scientific" specula- 
tions of the old travellers to Constantinople : the causes 
of the double current of the Bosphorus, why the waters 
of the Black Sea are salt and whether the floating islands 
mentioned by certain classical authors really exist. It 
is, by the way, interesting to note the apologetic tone 
adopted by Busbequius in common with his contem- 
poraries whenever venturing an opinion at variance with 
that of Pliny and other classical authorities ; it was indeed 
an uncritical age which hesitated to assume in itself any 
knowledge in advance of that possessed by the world 
of 1 500 years before ! 

The messengers sent to Suleyman to announce 
Busbequius's arrival returned in due course with orders 
that he was to proceed to Amadia. He, his horses, 
coaches and baggage train are "wafted' across the 
Bosphorus and the long land journey across half the 



The Credulous Hyena 71 



length of Asia Minor begins. Now again it is the variety 
of wild animals seen on the way which chiefly attracts 
the traveller's notice. First the vast number of tortoises 
which strew the ground on the Asiatic coast "stalking" 
he writes, "over all the Field without any Fear at all." 
"We had certainly seized upon many of them as a 
prey grateful to our Palates had it not been for the 
Turkish Guides whom we were afraid to disoblige; for 
if they had seen any of them brought to our Table, 
much more if they had touched them, they would have 
thought themselves so defiled that I know not how many 
Washings would not have been needed to cleanse their 
imagined Pollution." To which he somewhat callously 
adds: "I kept one Tortoise by me a great while which 
had two Heads and would have lived much longer had 
I been as careful of it as I might." 

Concerning the hyenas, which abounded in those 
parts of Asia Minor, he has the following surprising 
yarn to tell : " The Turks have a Tradition that the 
Hyena, which they call the Zirtlan, understands what 
Men say to one another. The Antients affirm'd that 
they could also imitate Man's Voice, and thereupon 
Hunters catch them by this Wile. They find out her 
Den, which they may easily do by the heap of Bones 
lying by it ; and then one of them goes in with a Rope, 
leaving the other end of the Rope in the Hands of his 
Fellows without ; and when he is creeping in he cries 
with a loud Voice, Joctur, Joctur, Ucala 1 i.e. 'She is not 
here, She is not here ! ' or T cannot find her ! ' where- 
upon the Hyena, thinking she is not discovered, lies 

1 Busbequius's scraps of Turkish are not always very intelligible. They 
have probably got a good deal mutilated in the process of transliteration 
and subsequent transcription by the English translator. 



72 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

close, and he ties the end of the rope round her leg; 
and then he goes forth, still crying, ' 1 cannot find her!' 
but when he is escaped quite out of the Hole, he cries 
out loudly 'she is within, she is within!' which the 
Hyena hearing and understanding the meaning of it, 
leaps out thinking to escape ; but when they hold her 
back by the Rope tied to her leg, and either kill her, or 
if they use care and Diligence, take her alive, for she 
is a fierce Creature and defends herself desperately." 

Thirty days after leaving Constantinople the am- 
bassador's party reached Amadia, then the chief city of 
Cappadocia, a strong place overhung by a high hill on 
the top of which was a castle garrisoned by a Turkish 
force maintained there to repulse raids by the Persians 
who occasionally penetrated even to this distance within 
their neighbour's territory. Busbequius and his suite 
were first introduced to the Grand Vizir and chief Pashas 
and an audience with the Sultan was duly arranged. 
When the day came Busbequius was introduced into 
Suleyman's presence supported under each arm by a 
Court Chamberlain in accordance with the ancient cus- 
tom the origin of which has already been explained in 
an earlier chapter of this book. Having thus laboriously 
arrived at the goal of his journeyings, the ambassador 
prepared to deliver himself of the message entrusted 
to him by the Archduke Ferdinand. The scene is 
described as follows : 

" The Sultan sate on a low Throne, not above a 
foot from the ground, but all covered over with rich 
Tapistries and with Cushions exquisitely wrought. His 
Bow and Arrows lay by his Side while he himself looked 
sternly upon us ; and yet there was a certain Majesty 
mixed with the Severity in his Countenance. After we 



A Taciturn Monarch 



73 



had kissed his Hand, we were led backward to the 
opposite part of the Room, for the Turks count it an 
unmannerly Thing to turn any of their Back-parts upon 
their Prince. From thence I had liberty to declare my 
Master's commands. But they suited not Soliman's 
lofty and imperious Spirit, who thought that nothing 
ought to be denied him ; so that he, as disdaining them, 
said nothing but Giusel, Giusel ; that is, Well, Well. 
And so we were dismissed to our Lodgings." 

While things went thus badly for Ferdinand's em- 
bassy, a mission from the Shah of Persia which had 
reached Amadia at about the same time, bound on a 
similar errand, met with a far different reception. 
Suleyman needed a respite from the Persian wars and 
readily accepted the peace proposals brought by the 
Shah's emissary with a mass of princely presents, which 
included " many choice sorts of Hangings, Babylonian 
Tents, gallant Horse- trappings and Saddles, Scymiters 
made at Damascus, whose Handles were studded with 
Jewels, and Shields of beautiful Workmanship, together 
with that which exceeded all, namely the Alcoran which 
is a counted the most noble Present of all." 

The Persian negotiations having been speedily con- 
cluded, the ambassador was offered a sumptuous banquet 
by Ali Pasha, the Deputy Grand Vizir, in a garden out- 
side the town. " The Table," relates Busbequius, "at 
which the Bashaw and the Persian Ambassador sate 
was covered over with a Canopy and the Dishes were 
served up after this manner. There were one hundred 
Youths which attended, like Waiters, all of them alike 
habited. First of all they entered one by one at a small 
distance from each other, till the Train of them reached 
up to the Table where the Guests were sitting. They 



74 sin Embassy to the Grand Turke 

had nothing at all in their Hands, that so they might 
not be hindered in saluting the Guests which was done 
in this manner; they laid their Hands on their Thighs 
and bowed their Heads downwards to the Ground. 
When this ceremony was performed, then he that stood 
next the Kitchen took a Dish and gave it to the next 
Page immediately before him, and he handed it to a 
Third and he to a Fourth and so from one toanother until 
it came to him that stood next the Table, who delivered 
it to the Hands of the Gentleman-Server, who placed 
it on the Table. And thus one hundred Dishes or more 
were served up in excellent order without any Noise at 
all. And when this was done, then these Waiters or 
Pages saluted the Guests a second time and so retired 
in the same order they came in." 

It is greatly to Busbequius's credit that the invidious 
distinction shewn in the treatment accorded to himself 
and to the Persian evokes no echo of resentment in his 
letters : but the motive behind the Sultan's behaviour 
lay, as he was aware, not in any personal animosity 
against himself but in Suleyman's wish to give visible 
evidence of his determination not to treat with Ferdinand 
on any other terms than those of a lord dealing with a 
suppliant. The German terms of peace were such as 
might be offered by a monarch to his peer and had 
small chance of acceptance by the Sultan in his present 
frame of mind. The most that Busbequius was able to 
secure was a six-months' truce (for fighting had broken 
out again since he left Vienna), and having accomplished 
this, he decided to return to his master to acquaint him 
by word of mouth with Suleyman's terms for a perma- 
nent treaty. " I was then," he writes, 4 4 again introduced 
into Solyman's presence and had two large embroidered 



Portrait of Suleyman 



75 



Vests, reaching down to my Ancles, clap'd onto me; 
they were so heavy that I could hardly stand under 
them. My Family also, that attended me, were all clad 
with silken Garments of divers Colours. In this Posture 
I stalked along, like Agamemnon or some such piece 
of Gravity in a Tragedy, and so I took leave of the 
Emperor, having first received Letters from him to my 
Master, seal'd and wrap'd up in Cloth of Gold. And 
thus, after we had taken our leaves of the Bashaws, I 
and my Colleagues departed from Amadia." 

Before closing this chapter of his narrative, Busbe- 
quius gives us a sketch of Suleyman the Magnificent. 
" If you ask me," says he, "what manner of man Solyman 
is, I'll tell you. He is an ancient Man, his countenance 
and the mien of his Body very majestic, well becoming 
the Dignity which he wears ; he is frugal and temperate 
though he might have taken a greater Liberty to him- 
self by the Rules of his own Religion, so that his very 
enemies can object nothing against him on that Account, 
but that he was too uxurious and that his over-indulgence 
to his Wife made him give way to the Death of his Son 
Mustapha [whom he caused to be bow-strung for an 
alleged attempt to incite rebellion]. Yet even that 
Crime was vulgarly imputed to the Ascendant that 
Roxolana had over him by reason of her Inchantments 
and Love-Potions. 

"He is now sixty Years of Age, and for a Man of 
his Years he enjoys a moderate proportion of Health ; 
and yet his Countenance doth discover that he carries 
about him some hidden Disease, 'tis thought a Gangrene 
or Ulcer in the Thigh ; but at solemn Audiences of 
Ambassadors he hath a Fucus to paint his Cheeks with, 
that he may appear sound and healthy to them and 



76 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

thereupon be more dreaded by foreign Princes, their 
Masters. Methought I discovered some such thing at 
my Dismission, for his Countenance was as sour when 
I left him as at my first Audience." 

The two ambassadors left Amadia on the same day, 
parting outside the walls to go East and West each to 
his native land. Within a fortnight the cumbrous train 
of coaches rumbled once more under the massive gate- 
way in those city walls which just a century before had 
crumbled before the battering of Mohammed's guns 
and let in his sanguinary hosts over the trampled corpse 
of the last of the Greek Emperors. 

As they left the town behind them the party came 
upon a sight which must have made the proud but 
kind-hearted ambassador grind his teeth with impotent 
rage. Waggon after waggon-load of girls and boys 
came pouring along the road, all of them Christian cap- 
tives on their way from Hungary to Constantinople to 
be sold in the slave-markets. ' ' There was no Distinction 
of Age ; Old and Young were driven in Herds or 
Companies, or else were tied in a long Chain, as we 
use to tail Horses when we carry them to Fairs. 
When I beheld this woful Sight, I could not forbear 
weeping and bemoaning the unhappy State of poor 
Christendom." 

After no worse experiences than a surfeit of carp 
consumed on a fast-day at Belgrade and a narrow escape 
from brigands when crossing a ford, the company arrived 
at Buda. Here the same ill-fortune that attended their 
entry into Turkey clung to them at their exit, for a 
couple of Turkish soldiers lent as a guard by the Pasha 
of Buda, being sent on ahead across the Danube, were 
set upon and badly mauled by a party of Hungarians, 



A Complacent Sanjak 77 



one of them receiving a sword-cut across the face which 
nearly severed his nose. 

Matters had to be explained as best they could to 
the local Turkish sanjak in the presence of the wounded 
man himself who appeared ' 'with his Nose sewed to- 
gether and making a lamentable Moan through it, de- 
siring Pity for his Condition." The sanjak fortunately 
proved to be a mild tempered man and a few ducats 
discreetly expended served to put things right ; so 
Busbequius and his companions passed over the river 
and, giving hearty thanks to Almighty God, set foot 
once more on Christian soil. 

Two days later, at Vienna, Ferdinand received the 
Sultan's letter from the hand of his faithful agent, and 
Busbequius retired for a brief rest to recuperate from 
the excitements and fatigues of his eventful journeys. 



CHAPTER VI 



AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE 
(2) 

Late in the autumn of 1554 Busbequius was invited 
by Ferdinand to return to Turkey with his reply to 
Suleyman s letter. The poor man naturally shews small 
enthusiasm for the mission, being convinced that he will 
accomplish little beyond running himself "into a Bushel 
of Troubles " ; nor does he view with any pleasure the 
prospect of the weary journey in the cold and rains of 
December without even the element of novelty to com- 
pensate for its fatigues. He reflects, however, that, 
should he refuse, there is no one else to take his place 
and so loyally deciding "not to slip his neck from the 
collar " he again takes leave of his friends and sallies 
forth. 

He once more reaches Constantinople early in 
January. There he finds the situation less promising 
than ever, for the Sultan had by now not only settled 
his account with the Persians but had also succeeded 
in quelling for a time the sporadic rebellions of his two 
sons, and so was free to undertake a campaign in Europe 
whenever he chose, without the fear of troubles breaking 
out behind his back. The Grand Vizir, to whom Bus- 
bequius presented himself, took pains to impress him 
with these facts and ominously remarked that unless he 
was the bearer of terms such as would satisfy the Sultan, 



A Bleak Reception 



79 



he had far better never have come back. " Therefore, 
if you be wise," said he, " don't rouze a sleeping Lyon ; 
for thereby you will but hasten your own Miseries which 
are coming on fast enough of themselves." Busbequius's 
old Turkish acquaintances also lent force to the Pasha's 
warning by prophesying as the mildest punishment for 
the Ambassador and his staff " that two of them would 
be cast into a Nasty Dungeon ; and the third (which 
was to be my Share) would have his nose and ears cut 
off and so be sent back to his master." 

The stout-hearted Fleming was as little deterred by 
these threats as by the sour looks which the common 
Turks cast as they passed his lodging or the coarse 
treatment which he received at the hands of the officials, 
who kept the mission penned up closely in their quarters, 
"less Ambassadors than Prisoners." 

Suleyman, as expected, would have nothing to say 
to Ferdinand's proposals and after two whole years of 
fruitless negotiation the embassy left Constantinople to 
return home. Busbequius himself, however, would not 
accept defeat and stubbornly remained on in the Turkish 
capital exchanging a desultory correspondence with 
Vienna and hoping by his persistent importunity to 
bring matters to a compromise. The winter of 1558 
was spent by Suleyman at Adrianople where he went 
with the double purpose of hawking water- fowl in the 
marshes and of striking further terror into the hearts 
of the Magyars by his nearness to their borders. 
Busbequius at once prepared to follow him and having 
obtained an escort of a dozen Janissaries from the Grand 
Vizir, started on the road. Of this journey he recounts 
an amusing little incident which may serve as a useful 
guide to travellers in Turkey. The roads were a morass 



80 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

and his guard soon began to grumble at the long marches ; 
"their complaints," writes Busbequius " troubled me not 
a little, because I was loth to disoblige this sort of People, 
and therefore I consulted with my Servants how I might 
allay their Discontents and make them willinger to 
Travel. One of mine told me he had observed that 
they were much taken with a certain kind of Caudle, 
or Gruel which my Cook used to make of Wine, Eggs, 
Sugar and Spices : Perhaps (says he) if they have some 
of that for their Breakfast, they will become plyable. 
This seemed but a mean Expedient, yet we resolved to 
try it and the Result answered our Expectation ; for 
after this sweet Soop away they trudged as merrily as 
need be and told me they would accompany me on the 
same terms to Buda, if I pleased." 

All that Busbequius could extract from the Sultan 
during his stay at Adrianople was another six-months 
truce. Returning again to Constantinople in March he 
found himself more than ever a prisoner. His quarters 
were, it is true, in the best part of the town and com- 
manded a distant view of Mount Olympus and of the 
Sea of Marmora, where he was able to watch the dolphins 
sporting, besides overlooking the road by which the 
Sultan passed from the Seraglio on his way to the 
selamlik every Friday ; but there was no garden and 
the house was, as he puts it, " all for use and nothing 
for delight and pleasure." The whole lower story con- 
sisted of stables opening on a courtyard which probably 
accountedforthelargecoloniesofsnakes,lizards,scorpions 
and weasels which infested the premises. Busbequius's 
love for animals and his keen interest in their habits 
provided an excellent antidote to ennui and his letters 
contain some amusing notes on his domestic menagerie. 



The Embassy Menagerie 81 



" For my Part," he says, " I was not content with 
the native Animals of the Country but filled my House 
with outlandish ones too; and my Family busied them- 
selves, by my Order, to our mutual Contents in feeding 
them, that we might the better bear the absence from 
our own Country. For seeing we were debarred from 
human Society, what better Conversation could we have 
to drive Grief out of our Minds than among Wild Beasts ? 
Otherwise Stones, Walls and Solitudes had been but 
lamentable Amusements for us. 

" Amongst these Animals, then, Apes led the Van, 
which making us good Sport occasioned great Laughter 
amongst us. and therefore you could seldom see them 
without a whole Ring of my People about them delighting 
to observe their antick Tricks and Gestures. I also 
bred up some Wolves, some Bears, some broad-horned 
Stags (vulgarly miscalled Bucks) and common Deers ; 
also Hinds, Lynx's, Ichneumons, or Indian Rats, and 
Weesels of that sort you call Ferrets and Fairies, and, 
if you would know all, I kept also a Hog whose noisome 
smell was wholesome for my Horses, as my Grooms 
persuaded me : So that in my nomenclature of other 
Creatures it is not fit I should omit my Hog which made 
my House to be mightily frequented by the Asiatics. 
They came thick and threefold to see that Creature, 
which is counted unclean by them, and by the Laws 
of their Religion they are forbid to eat it, so that they 
never saw one before. Yea all Turks are as afraid to 
touch a Hog as Christians are to come near to those 
who are infected with the Plague. This Humour of 
theirs being well known, we put a pretty Trick on them. 
When anyone had a mind to send me a secret Message, 
which he would not have my Chiaux know of, he put 

h. 6 



82 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

it into a little Bag together with a Roasting-Pig and 
sent it by a Youth. When my Chiaux met him, he 
would ask him what he had there ? Then the Boy, being 
instructed before, whisper'd him in the Ear and said 
that a Friend of mine had sent me a Roasting-Pig for 
a Present. The Chiaux thereupon would punch the Bag 
with his Stick to see whether the Boy spake true or 
no ; and when he heard the Pig grunt, he would run 
back as far as ever he could, saying ' Get thee in with 
the nasty Present ! ' ; then, spitting on the Ground and 
turning to his Fellows, he would say ' 'Tis strange to 
see how these Christian do dote on this filthy impure 
Beast ; they cannot forbear eating of it though their 
Lives were at stake.' Thus he was handsomely choused, 
and the Boy brought me what secret Message was 
sent me. 

" I kept also a great many sorts of Birds, as Eagles, 
Jackdaws, Muscovy Ducks, Balearick Cranes and Part- 
ridges ; yea, my House was so full of them that, if a 
Painter were to draw it, he may take from thence a 
copy of Noah's Ark. 

"If you please to hear me, I'll tell you a story of 
a Bird : I have, among my other birds, a Balearic Crane 
which differs from the ordinary sort of Cranes by a 
white Plume of Feathers that grows hanging down from 
both her Ears ; and besides, all the Fore -part of her 
Neck-Feathers were black, and the Turks adorn their 
Turbants with it ; and there is some difference in their 
Bigness. This Balearic Bird was mightily affected with 
a Spanish Soldier, whom I had redeemed out of his 
Chains ; when he walked abroad, the Bird would walk 
with him, though for many hours together ; when he 
stood still so did the Crane ; when he sat down she 



An Affectionate Crane 83 



would stand by him and suffer him to handle her and 
stroke down her feathers, whereas she would not suffer 
any body else so much as to touch her ; whenever he 
was gone from Home, she would come to his Chamber 
Door and knock against it with her Beak ; if any body 
open 'd it, she would look all about, to see whether he 
were in the Room ; and not finding him she would 
traverse it about, making such a shrill Din and Noise, 
that nothing living could endure it ; so that we were 
forced to shut her up that her Noise might not offend 
us. But when he returned as soon as ever she fixed 
her eyes on him, she would make to him, clapping her 
wings with such an antick Posture of her Body as 
Dancers in a Jig use to do ; or if she had been to pre- 
pare herself for Combat with a Pigmy. In fine, she at 
last used to lie under his Bed at Night, where she laid 
him an Egg. 

" I must tell you I have Partridges too (to acquaint 
you with my whole stock of pleasurable Recreations). 
You would wonder, as 1 did myself at first, how tame 
they are. They were brought from Chios with red Feet 
and Beaks. They were so troublesome to me by standing 
at my Feet and picking the Dust out of my Velvet 
Pantoufle with their Beaks, that they might dust them- 
selves therewith that, to be rid of the Molestation, I was 
forced to shut them up in a Chamber where in a short 
time they grew over-fat and died. 

" Be pleased to know that I have also a breed of 
fine Horses, some of them from Syria, others from 
Cicilia, Arabia and Cappodocia. 

" As I take Pleasure in my Horses on other Accounts, 
so especially in the Evening when I behold them brought, 
one by one, out of their Stables and placed in the Yard, 

6—2 



84 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 



that so they may enjoy the Night- Air in Summer-time 
and rest more sweetly. They march out so stately, 
shaking their Manes on their high Necks, as if they 
were proud to be seen, and they have fetters on their 
Fore-feet and one of their Hinder-feet is tied by a Cord 
to a Stake. 

' \ There is no Creature so gentle as a Turkish Horse, 
nor more respectful to his Master or the Groom that 
dresses him. The reason is because they treat their 
Horses with great Lenity. They will with their Teeth 
take up a Staff or Club upon the Road, which their 
Rider hath let fall, and hold it up to him again ; and 
when they are perfect in this Lesson, then, for their 
Credit, they have Rings of Silver hung from their 
Nostrils as a Badge of Honour and good Discipline. 
I saw some Horses, when their Master was fallen from 
the Saddle, that would stand Stock-still, without wagging 
a Foot, until he got up again. Once too I saw some 
Horses, when their Master was at Dinner with me in 
an upper Room, prick up their Ears to hear his Voice ; 
and when they did so, they neighed for Joy." 

In the middle of the sixteenth century the possibility 
of another invasion of the Barbarians must have been 
very present in men's minds. The Turk's insatiable 
lust for conquest had for a generation past wrought 
havoc in three Continents and now, at the zenith of his 
power, he threatened to break loose upon Europe as , 
his forerunners from the steppes of Asia had done eleven 
hundred years before. On this subject Busbequius 
writes in a despondent tone. After dwelling on the high 
efficiency of the Turkish army, the abstemiousness and 
hardihood of their troops, the admirable organization 
of their auxiliary services (such a striking contrast to 



A Damaging Comparison 



85 



the happy-go-lucky methods of European armies of that 
time) and the unwavering discipline of the men, he 
exclaims : " Thus the Turks surmount great Difficulties 
in War with a great deal of Patience and Sobriety. But 
our Christian Soldiers carry it far otherwise ; they scorn 
homely Fare in their Camps ; they must have dainty 
Bits, forsooth, such as Thrushes, Blackbirds and Ban- 
quetting Stuff. If they have not these, they are ready 
to mutiny, as if they were famished ; and if they have 
them, they are undone — their own Intemperance kills 
them, if the Enemy spares their Lives. 

" When I compare the Difference between their 
Soldiers and ours, I stand amazed to think what will 
be the Event ; for certainly their Soldiers must needs 
conquer and ours be vanquished, both cannot prosper- 
ously stand together : For on their side there is a mighty, 
strong and wealthy Empire, great Armies. Experience 
in War, a veteran Soldiery, a long Series of Victories, 
Patience in Toil, Concord, Order, Discipline, Frugality, 
and Vigilance. On our Side there is public Want, private 
Luxury, Strength weakened, Minds discouraged, an 
Unaccustomedness to Labour and Arms, Soldiers re- 
fractory, Commanders covetous, a Contempt of Dis- 
cipline, Licentiousness, Rashness, Drunkenness, Glut- 
tony ; and, what is worst of all, they are used to conquer, 
we to be conquered. Can any Man doubt in this case 
what the Event will be ? " 

In the following year, in spite of Busbequius's fore- 
bodings, the tide of War turned slightly in favour of 
Christian arms. A large Turkish force was repulsed 
in an attempt to storm Szigeth — the city before whose 
walls Suleyman was destined to breathe his last ten years 
later. This success did much to restore the spirits of 



86 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

the imprisoned ambassador. He had now for more 
than four years been cooped up in his house with a 
Ckaoushy or sentry, constantly on guard at his door, 
who only allowed him out on the rarest occasions. The 
Sultan's action in treating an ambassador in this shame- 
ful manner was, as Busbequius himself admits, prompted 
by motives of policy. Some time before the Republic 
of Venice, Turkey's chief maritime rival, had sent their 
Agent to Constantinople to treat about the town of N apoli 
di Romania, lately recovered by the Venetians. The 
Agent was given secret instructions to try every means 
in his power to save the place from being handed back 
to the Turks, but, if it became clear that war could be 
averted by no other means, to offer its surrender in the 
last resort. A traitor having obtained a copy of these 
instructions, sold them to the Grand Vizir. When there- 
fore the hapless Agent began the negotiations by swearing 
that the surrender of the town was not a matter for 
discussion, being quite outside his competence, he was 
at once confronted with the stolen paper and, being un- 
able to dispute the authenticity of the document, had 
no choice but to sign away the town to the Turks. This 
incident had convinced Suleyman that Christian ambas- 
sadors usually possessed wider discretionary powers than 
they were willing to admit, and he hoped, by making life 
sufficiently intolerable for the unfortunate Busbequius, 
to induce him to accept the Turkish terms for peace. 

It happened that just at this time a messenger, one 
Philip Baldus, arrived at Constantinople with despatches 
for Busbequius from Vienna. Rustam, the Grand Vizir, J 
noted Baldus's arrival and drew his own conclusions 
from the event, supposing that he carried orders from 
Ferdinand to his ambassador to abate his terms. 



THE GRAND VIZIR 
From Rycaut's History of the Turks, 



A Clever Strategem 87 



This seemed the moment for clinching the matter 
by means of a veiled threat, so, on a very hot day, he 
sent to Busbequius a large water-melon of the sort which 
possesses a brilliant red core. The significance of the 
gift did not escape Busbequius, who knew that, according 
to the elaborate symbolism current among the Turks, 
it was equivalent to a threat of war. Any possible am- 
biguity was removed by the message accompanying the 
melon which was to the effect that the Grand Vizir 
advised Busbequius to use the fruit as it was suited to 
the season, ' 1 being an excellent Cooler"; to which 
Rustam added that it might interest the ambassador 
to know that melons of a similar sort but of much greater 
size grew in great quantities about Buda and Belgrade 
— by which he meant cannon-balls. Busbequius 
responded by thanking the Pasha for his gift which he 
promised to use, but he wished to point out that, as 
for the melons at Buda and Belgrade, it was no great 
wonder that they should grow so well there seeing that 
plenty of even larger dimensions flourished at Vienna. 
"It was a Pleasure to me," he adds in his letter, "to let 
Rustam know that I could retort Quibble for Quibble ! " 

By mid-summer of 1559a fresh revolt by the Sultan's 
son Bayezid forced his father to lead the army once 
again into Asia. The departure of Suleyman and his 
troops from the capital afforded a spectacle which 
Busbequius decided on no account to miss. This gave 
rise to a humorous situation which he shall describe 
in his own words : 

"When I was certainly informed that the Sultan 
was ready to pass over into Asia and that the Day was 
fixed for his Departure, I told my Chiaux that I had 
a mind to see him march out, and therefore he should 



88 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

come betimes in the Morning and open the Doors, for 
he used to carry the Keys home with him at Night. 
He promised me courteously he would do so. Then 
I ordered my Janissaries and my Interpreters to take 
me an upper Room in the Way the Emperor was to 
pass, convenient for my View, they obeyed my Com- 
mands. When the Day was come, I rose before t'was 
Light expecting that the Chiaux had opened my Doors, 
but finding them shut, I sent several Messengers to 
him to come and let me out, both my Janissaries that 
waited within and my Druggermen that waited without ; 
this I did through the chinks of the Door, which was 
very old. But the Chiaux still spun Delays, pretending 
that he would come presently. Thus I spent some time, 
till I heard the Noise of the Guns, which their Emperor 
used to fire when the Emperor took Horse ; then I 
began to fret and fume, seeing myself so deluded. My 
disappointment and just Indignation did affect the Janis- 
saries themselves ; they told me that if my People would 
thrust hard with them, they without would so press upon 
the Valves, which were old and loose, that the Bars 
would fall out. I took their Council ; the Doors flew 
open accordingly and out we went, hastening to the 
Room I had hired. 

" My Chiaux had a mind to frustrate my Desire, 
and yet he was no bad Man either ; but having com- 
municated my Request to the Bashaws, they were not 
willing that any Christian should behold their Prince 
marching with so small a Force against his own Son, 
' and therefore,' said they to him, ' do you promise him 
fair, but be sure to delay him until the Sultan is on 
Shipboard '." 

"When I came to the House where a Room was 



A Glittering Cavalcade 



8 9 



engaged for me, the Door was shut so that I could no 
more enter into that than I could go out of my own ; 
when I knocked, nobody answered. Hereupon the 
Janissaries again told me that, if I commanded them, 
they would either break open the Doors or get in at 
the Window and open them. I told them they should 
not break open anything, but if they would go in at 
the Windows, they might ; they presently did so and 
opened the Door. When I went up Stairs, I found the 
House full of Jews — a whole Synagogue of them. They 
looked upon it as a Miracle that I should enter when 
the Doors were shut ; but being informed of the Truth, 
an old grave Matron, in comely Habit, address'd her- 
self and complain'd to me in Spanish of the Violence 
1 had offered to her House. I told her she had done 
me a Wrong in not keeping her Word, and that I was 
not a Man to be thus deluded. She seemed dissatisfied 
and the time would not admit of further Discourse. In 
short, I was allowed one Window which on the back 
side looked out into the Street, and from thence with 
a great deal of pleasure, I saw all the Grand Procession. 

" The Gulupagi and Ulufagi marched two by two; 
the Selchers one by one. The Spahis, that is the Grand 
Seignior's Horse-Guards, were distinguished by their 
Ranks and Troops, being about 6000, besides a great 
number of the Domestics of the Prime Vizir and other 
Bashaws. The Horses were set out with Silver and 
Trappings studded with Gold and Jewels, and the Riders 
clad with a Coat or Vest made of Silk Velvet, or other 
Cloth of Scarlet, Purple or dark Blue Colour, intermixed 
with Gold and Silver. Each had two Cases hanging 
by his Sides ; one held his Bow, the other his Arrows, 
both of neat Babylonian Workmanship ; and so was 



90 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

his Buckler which he wore on his left Arm which is 
proof against Arrows, Clubs and Swords. In their right 
Hands they carried light Spears painted in green. Their 
Scimitars were studded with Jewels and made of Steel, 
and hanged down from their Saddles. Their Heads 
were covered with very fine white Cotton-Linen, in the 
midst whereof stood up a Tuft of Purple Silk, plaighted ; 
some also wore black Feathers a-top. 

" After the Horse a large Body of Janissaries fol- 
lowed, being a-foot and seldom carrying any other Arms 
than Muskets. The Make and Colour of their Clothes 
are almost the same, so that you would judge them all 
to be the Servants of one Man. Yet in their Feathers, 
Crests and suchlike military Ornaments, they are over- 
curious or rather proud, especially the veterans in the 
Rear — you would think a whole Wood of walking 
Feathers were in their Fire-stars and Frontals. After 
them their Officers and Commanders follow on Horse- 
back, distinguished each by his own Ensign. In the 
last Place marches their Aga or General. Then succeed 
the chief Courtiers among whom are the Bashaws ; then 
the Foot of the Prince's Life-guard in a peculiar Habit, 
carrying their Bows bent in their Hands, for they are 
all Archers ; next the Prince's Led- Horses, all with 
curious Trappings. H e himself rode on a stately Prancer, 
looking sour with his brows bent, as if he had been 
angry ; behind him came three Youths, one carrying 
a Flagon of Water, another his Cloak, another his Bow. 
There followed some Eunuchs of the Bed-Chamber ; 
and at last a Troop of about Two Hundred Horse 
closed the Procession. 

" After I had the Satisfaction of viewing all this, 
my only Care was to appease my Hostess, I sent for 



A Deluded Chaoush 91 

er and told her she should have remembered her Bar- 
gain and not have shut the Door against me ; ' but 
though you/ said I, 'don't remember your Promise, I'll 
perform mine; yes, I will be better than my Word: I pro- 
mise! you but seven Pistoles, but here's ten for you, that 
so you may not repent your Admittance of me into your 
House.' When the Woman thus unexpectedly saw her 
Hand filled with Gold, she was melted down into a Com- 
pliance, and the whole Synagogue of them fell to Compli- 
ments and giving me Thanks. They offered me Grecian 
Wine and a Banquet which I refused, but, with great Ac- 
clamations of all the Jews made haste to be gone that I 
might manage a new Dispute with my Chiaux for keep- 
ing my Doors fastened when I should have come forth. 

" I found him sitting mournfully in my Porch, where 
he began a long Complaint, that I ought not to have 
gone abroad without his Consent, nor have broken open 
the Door ; that I had violated the Law of Nations 
thereby, and suchlike Stuff. I replied that if he had 
come betimes in the Morning as he had promised, he 
had prevented all this ; his Breach of Promise had oc- 
casioned it. I demanded also of him whether he looked 
upon me as an Ambassador or as a Prisoner ? 1 As an 
Ambassador,' says he. ' If you think me a Prisoner/ 
said I, 'then I am not a fit Instrument to make a Peace, 
for a Prisoner is not his own Man, but if an Ambassador, 
as you confess, then why am I not a free Man ? Cap- 
tives use to be shut up, not Ambassadors : Liberty is 
granted to such in all Nations : they may claim it as 
their public due : He ought to know that he was not 
appointed to be my Serjeant or Keeper, but to assist 
me with his good Offices, that so no other Man might 
do an Injury to me or mine.'" 



92 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

Shortly after his successful conflict with his jailors, 
Busbequius succeeded in obtaining the Sultan's permis- 
sion to visit the army encamped on the Asiatic shore. H ere, 
being more in the public eye, he found himself far better 
treated ; he was freed from all the petty annoyances to 
which he was interminably subjected at Constantinople 
and was, on the contrary, provided with a handsome 
lodging and every facility for studying the habits and 
methods of a Turkish army in the field. As before, he 
is intensely impressed by the discipline and orderliness 
of the soldiers and the complete absence of rowdiness, 
drunkenness and gambling. His visit to the camp ter- 
minated rather abruptly after a regrettable encounter 
between a party of his own servants and some Janis- 
saries. The latter returning en deshabille from a 
swim in the sea, were insulted by the embassy servants 
who failed to recognize them and paid handsomely for 
their error. For a time relations were somewhat strained 
between Busbequius and the Sultan, as the former, with 
his usual stubbornness, refused to offer any satisfaction 
for his men's behaviour ; there arrived however, on the 
scene a learned and worthy person of Amsterdam" who 
had been sent by Ferdinand to carry some royal presents 
to Suleyman (including a clock " neatly made and borne 
like a Tower on an Elephant's Back ") which mightily 
took the fancy of the Grand Seigneur and restored him 
to comparative good humour. So Busbequius came 
back again to his dismal quarters in the capital and 
resigned himself to a further spell of his monotonous 
existence, relieved only by the society of his family of 
pets and his encounters with the petty tyrant who acted 
as the guardian of his portals. 



CHAPTER VII 

AN EMBASSY TO THE GRAND TURKE 

(3) 

The year 1560 saw Busbequius' exile in Turkey draw- 
ing to its close: it also witnessed an event which 
was to bring a great change into his life at the capital. 
This was the arrival of the broken relics of the Christian 
allied fleet defeated by the Turks off the island of Jerba 
on the North African coast. Busbequius's description of 
the sad spectacle of the captured ships being towed into 
harbour is reserved for a later chapter, so we may 
proceed at once to his account of the treatment of the 
unfortunate crews. 

"The Prisoners/' he says "were brought into the 
Seraglio, but so miserably Hunger-starv'd that some 
could hardly stand on their Legs ; others fell down in a 
Swoon from very Feebleness ; others had Arms put upon 
them in a Jeer, in which Posture they died. The Turks 
insulted over them on every Hand, promising to them- 
selves the Empire of the whole World ; 'for who shall 
now be able to stand before us (they said) since we have 
overcome the Spaniards?"' 

To be captured by the Turk in those days meant, 
as a rule, a lifetime of misery in the slave-galleys and 
it is hard to picture adequately the utter hopelessness 
which must have filled the hearts of these wretched 
prisoners. A few of the higher officers avoided the 
common lot. Don Bellinger, the Genoese Admiral 
purchased at a great price the privilege of internment 



94 sl n Embassy to the Grand Turke 

on Chios, but the military commander-in-chief, Don 
Alvarez de Sande, Duke of Medina, was shut up 
in a castle on the shores of the Black Sea, while 
most of the rank and file were thrust into Galata 
Tower. The tragic circumstances of his fellow-Chris- 
tians deeply affected Busbequius and he lost no 
time and spared no effort in doing what he could to 
mitigate their sufferings. He describes the work as 
follows: " I was forced to provide several sorts of Relief 
for their several Necessities, different Diseases requiring 
different Cures. There lay a Multitude of sick Persons 
in a certain Temple of Pera, whom the Turks cast out 
as Abjects, and many of these perished for want of con- 
venient Broths for their sick Stomachs. When I was 
told thereof, I dealt with a Friend of mine, a Citizen of 
Pera, desiring him to buy some Weather-Sheep every 
day and boil them at his own House to distribute the 
Flesh to some, and the Broth to others, as their Stomachs 
could bear, which was a great Relief to Abundance of 
them. But those that were in Health required another 
sort of Assistance and my House was full from Morning 
to Night with many Complaints. Some were used to 
good Diet, and a Piece of brown Bread — which was 
their daily Allowance — would not go down well with 
them ; some that used to drink Wine could not bear the 
perpetual use of Water only ; some wanted Blankets to 
cover them, having never known what it was to lie on 
the bare Ground ; some wanted Coats, some Shoes, but 
the most part desired some Footing-money to gratify 
their Keepers, that they might deal the more mercifully 
with them. Money was the only Remedy for these 
Mischiefs, so that every day some Guilders were ex- 
pended by me on their Account. But these Expenses 
were tolerable, compared with certain greater Sums that 



A Bushel of Troubles 



95 



were desired of me for some prayed me to be their Surety 
for their Ransom-Money; and herein every one was 
very forward with his Pretences, one alleging Nobleness 
of Birth, another that he had great Friends and Alliances, 
a Third that he was Commander in the Army and had 
much Pay due to him, a Fourth that he had Cash enough 
at Home and was able to imburse me. Some boasted 
of their Valour in the Fight, indeed every one had some- 
thing to say for himself. When I demanded them 
whether they were sure to repay me? 'God forbid,' 
said they 'for what is more unjust than to defraud a 
Man that hath restored us to our Liberty, even out of 
the Jaws of Death?' 

"And the Truth is it was very grievous to me to see 
their State, and so I was induced to pass my Word, in 
all, for iooo Ducats and have thereby run myself so 
much into Debt that I fear I have but freed them from 
Fetters only to clap them on my own Legs." 

Poor Busbequius was now to experience the truth of 
the old adage that troubles never come singly. His 
next misfortune, which, though it may not seem of 
so desperate a nature to us of the present day, 
was evidently a most cruel blow to him, arose from 
the growing cantankerousness and fanaticism which 
the Sultan developed in his old age. "Solyman," 
writes Busbequius, "grows every day more and more 
superstitious in his Religion. He used to delight him- 
self in Musicke and in the chanting of young Singers, 
but all this has now been laid aside by the work of a 
certain old Sibyl, noted for Sanctity, who told him, if 
he left not off that Sport, he would be severely punished 
after his Death. He was also prevailed upon by her to 
forbid the use of Wine. Hereupon an Edict was pub- 



96 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

lished that for the Future no Wine should be imported 
into Constantinople, either for Christians or Jews." 

For several weeks Busbequius fought his case stoutly 
with the Grand Vizir and the chief Pashas, appealing 
to his ambassadorial privileges and pointing out the 
disastrous effects which the drinking of water was likely 
to have on his health, the sudden change being calcu- 
lated, he assured them, to cause serious disease, if not 
death itself. At last after a supreme effort, he extracted 
from the Vizir a concession which permitted him to 
convey, carefully concealed in a travelling carriage, as 
much wine as could be transported between dark and 
dawn on a single night from the nearest landing place 
to the Embassy cellars. 

A far worse thing befell the mission shortly after, 
when the plague got a footing in the house. Once more 
Suleyman's religious bigotry was their undoing, for when 
Busbequius requested leave to abandon the plague- 
stricken premises, the only answer the Sultan vouch- 
safed to him was : " Is not Pestilence God's Arrow, which 
will always hit his Mark? If God would visit me here 
how could I avoid it? Is not the Plague in my own 
Palace, and yet I do not think of removing ?" " And so," 
adds Busbequius, " I was forced to stay in a Pestilential 
and Infected House." The Pestilence passed and the 
Ambassador himself survived, but he lost his best friend 
and faithful physician, the excellent Dr Quackquellen, 
whom he buried with many tears in unconsecrated soil 
erecting a monument over his grave "as a due testimony 
to his Vertue." 

All too late a capricious volte face on the part 
of the Sultan brought permission for a change of air 
and Busbequius left his dismal quarters in Stamboul for 



A Fisherman s Paradise 



97 



a villa on the pleasant island of Prinkipo 1 , one of the 
little group situated a few miles distant from Constan- 
tinople in the Sea of Marmora. Here Busbequius spent 
three months enjoying himself as he had never done 
since he arrived in Turkey seven years before. The 
island was inhabited solely by Greek fishermen and the 
genial Ambassador joined with zest in their usual avo- 
cation. "The Sea" he writes, "is full of divers sorts of 
Fishes, which I took sometimes with Net, sometimes 
with Hook and Line. Several Grecian Fishers with 
their boats attended me and where we had hopes 
of the greatest sport thither we sailed and cast our Nets. 
Sometimes we played above board and when we saw a 
Crab or a Lobster at the bottom, where the Sea was 
very clear, we ran him through with a Fishspear, and 
so hailed him up into a Vessel. But our best and most 
profitable sport was with a drag-net ; where we thought 
most fish were there we cast it in a round ; it took up a 
great compass, with the ropes tied to the end of it, 
which were to bring it to Land. To those Ropes the 
Fisher tied green Boughs very thick, so that the Fish 
might be frightned, and not seek to escape. Thus we 
brought great Sholes of trembling Fishes to Shore. 
Sea-Bream, Scorpion-Fishes, Dragon-Fishes, Scare- 
Fish, Jule-Fish, Chane or Ruff-Fish, whose variety did 
delight my eye and the inquiry into their nature did 
hugely please my Fancy. 

" When tempestuous Weather keptme from the Sea," 
he continues, £ T delighted myself in finding out strange 
and unusual Plants at Land. I would sometimes go 
afoot all over the Island, having a young Franciscan 

1 The home of another illustrious State prisoner in the person of 
General Townshend, the defender of Kut. 

H. 7 



98 An Embassy to the Grand Ttirke 

Monk in my Company, a jolly Fellow, but very fat, and 
not used to travel on Foot. I took him out of a Mon- 
astry at Pera, to be my Partner in my Walks; he was 
so corpulent and pursy, that when I went on a-pace to 
catch myself a Heat, he would follow me at a Distance 
panting and blowing, with these words in his Mouth, 
' What need all this haste ? Whom do we run from, or 
whom do we pursue? What are we carriers or Posts 
that must make speed to deliver some important 
Letters?' thus he mutter'd, till the very Sweat pierced 
through all his Cloaths. In fine, when we came back to 
our Lodging, he threw himself upon his Bed, wofully 
complaining, and crying out, he was undone: 'What 
Injury have I done, said he, that you thus hurry on to 
destroy me ? ' And, in this fretting Posture, we had much 
ado to persuade him to eat a bit of Dinner." 

On the subject of monks Busbequius tells the follow- 
ing story of a scene which took place after his return to 
the capital. "Let me now tell you" he says "a wondrous 
Story of a wandering Turkish Monk. He wore a Cap 
and white Cloak down to his Heels, with long hair such 
as Painters draw the Apostles with. He had a pro- 
mising Countenance, but was a meer Impostor; and yet 
the Turks admired him as a Miraculous Man. My In- 
terpreters were persuaded to bring him to me that I 
might see him. He dined with me soberly and modestly 
enough; afterwards he goes down into the Yard, and 
upon his return he takes up a huge Stone and struck 
with it divers times upon his naked Breast as many blows 
as would have felled an Ox : Then he took a piece of 
Iron that was heated in the Fire on purpose, and thrust 
it into his Mouth, where he stirred it up and down so 
that his Spittle hiss'd again; 'twas a long piece of Iron, 



The Hoji and the Sanziack 99 

thick and quadrangular in that part which he thrust into 
his Mouth and it was red-hot as a live Coal: Then he 
put the Iron into the Fire again, and after I had made 
him a Present, he saluted me and departed. My Domes- 
ticks wonder'd at the Trick, all but one who pretended 
that he knew more than all the rest ; Oh, says he, he is 
a meer Cheat; and thereupon he takes hold of the 
stronger part of the Iron, pretending he could do as 
much as the Juggler. He had no sooner grasped it in 
his Hands than he threw it away, and his Fingers were 
well burnt for his Audaciousness, so that they were many 
days acuring. This accident caused his fellows to laugh, 
and jearingly to ask whether the Iron were hot enough 
yet, and whether he would touch it again or not. 

"The same Turk, while he was at Dinner, told me 
that the Prior of their Monastery was a Man famous for 
sanctity and Miracles, for he would spread his Cloak 
over a Lake near adjoining and sitting on it, would row 
up and down whither he pleased: And that he would 
strip himself naked, and be tied to a Sheep newly kill'd 
tying arms to arms, and Leg to Leg and so would be 
thrown into the hot Oven till the Sheep were bak'd fit 
to be eaten, then he himself would be taken out without 
any harm at all: You will not believe this; neither do 
I, only I relate what he told me ; but that part concern- 
ing the red-hot Iron I saw with my own eyes." 

Wandering on from one subject to another in his 
pleasant discoursive way Busbequius entertains the friend 
to whom he addresses his letters with a disquisition on 
Turkish table manners and mentions the custom among 
guests at a dinner-party of taking tit-bits home with 
them for their women-folk. "Let me tell you" he adds, 
"a Story to this purpose, which I know will make you 

7—2 



ioo An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

laugh heartily, as it did me at the first hearing it. 'Tis 
the custom of the Turkish Bashaws, some days before 
their Fast to make a public Feast or Entertainment 
for all Comings ; none are excluded, yet generally none 
but Servants, Friends and Relations come. There is a 
Napkin made of Leather spread over a long Tapestry 
on the Ground, full of Dishes; the Table will hold 
abundance of Guests ; the Bashaw himself sits at the 
upper End and the choicest Guests next to him, and then 
the ordinary Guests in ranks, till the Table be full. It 
will not hold all at once, but some stand by till the others 
have din'd, which they do with great Decency and Silence; 
and then drinking a Draught of Honey diluted with 
Water, salute their Landlord and away they go. In 
their Places others sit down, and the third Class after 
them ; the Servants still taking off the old Dishes and 
setting on new. A certain Bashaw, making such a 
Feast, invited a Sanziack to sit next to him ; an old Man 
of the Sect the Turks call Hojies, that is learned Men, 
sat next to him, This Hoji, seeing such Plenty of Vic- 
tuals before him, had a Mind to carry home some to his 
Wife after he had filled his own Belly; but looking for 
his Handkerchief to fill it with Victuals, he found he 
had left it at home ; being then in a straight, he bethought 
himself and resolv'd to fill his Sleeve which hanged on 
his Back, but mistaking the Sanziac&s for his own, he 
stuft it full of Dainties and stops it in with a Piece of 
Bread that nothing might fall out. He was not to touch 
his Sleeve till he had lay'd his Hands on his Breast or 
Thigh and so saluted his Entertainer, as their Custom 
is; when he had done that he took up his own Sleeve 
and finds it empty, at which he was much amazed and 
returned home very sad. A while after the Sanziack 




A HO J A 

From Rycaut's History of the Turks, 1669 



The End in Sight 



101 



also rose from the Table and, having saluted the Bashaw 
at every Step, his Sleeve cast out the Dainties it was 
replenished with unknown to him, and seeing a Train 
of Junkets behind him, he blushed for Shame. The 
Company fell a laughing, but the Bashaw imagining 
how it came to pass, desired him to sit down again, and 
sent for the Hoji; when he came, he accosted him thus : 
* I wonder that you, an old Friend, and having a Wife 
and Children at home, did carry home nothing to them, 
seeing my Table was so well furnished.' 'Truly, Sir,' 
said he, 'twas no Fault of mine, but of my Evil Genius; 
for I stuffed my Sleeve with Viands and yet when I 
came out I found it empty.' Thus the Sanziack was 
cleared and the Disappointment of the Hoji, together 
with the Novelty of the Case occasioned no small 
Laughter throughout all the Company." 

Busbequius's indomitable patience bore fruit at last. 
He had indeed, after the recent Christian reverses, to* 
"draw in his Sails somewhat " — as he quaintly phrases 
it — but a formula for a treaty was eventually agreed upon 
between him and the Grand Vizir which satisfied Suley- 
man and was approved in principle by the Emperor. 
Busbequius's powers permitted of his signing the treaty 
on behalf of Ferdinand, "but," said he "I knew there want 
not Sycophants in Princes' Courts who go about to ob- 
scure the best Services of their Ministers, especially if 
Strangers. I therefore thought it fit to leave all to the 
Pleasure of my Master." So he cautiously represented 
to the Turks that certain of the treaty articles were ob- 
scure and that, though confident of the Emperor's accept- 
ance, he would prefer to travel to Vienna accompanied 
by an Agent of the Porte who could explain their inter- 
pretation and obtain Ferdinand's own signature. To 



102 An Embassy to the Grand Turke 

this the Grand Vizir assented, and appointed the Drago- 
man of the Porte, a certain Ibrahim, to be their Agent. 

When the time for his departure came, Busbequius 
was invited by the Divan to the customary banquet 
given to an ambassador on the termination of his mission. 
Adhering to his policy of leaving open the door to the 
last moment, he refused the feast, though gladly ac- 
cepting a queerly assorted gift from his old friend, the 
Grand Vizir, consisting of three excellent Arabian horses, 
together with a waistcoat embroidered in gold, a glass 
of rare balsam and a box of Alexandrian treacle, "the 
best in the World." The Sultan, surly to the last, gave 
him none but thecommon gifts bestowed on petty envoys 
and an ill-tempered homily on the futility of opposing 
his imperial will. 

Shortly before Busbequius had, by his unwearying 
efforts, succeeded in obtaining the release of Don Al- 
varez de Sande, the ill-starred general captured at the 
fall of Jerba, and the grateful Spaniard accompanied 
his benefactor on the journey home. De Sande was such 
a man as Busbequius loved, a cheerful, facetious fellow 
with a fund of anecdote and a nature as boyish as the 
Ambassador's own. They found each other excellent 
company capping one another's stories and running races 
on the road "in which", says Busbequius, " I, being lean, 
could easily out pace him who was fat and pursy and 
just out of Prison." Ibrahim, possessed with oriental 
notions of propriety, regarded with horror these undig- 
nified performances on the part of the travelling com- 
panions "and beseeched us, by all that we held dear, 
not to be seen on foot by the Villages for it would be 
accounted a Disgrace to us among the Turks." His 
implorings sometimes availed to induce the pair back 



Honest Henry 



103 



into their coach but often "the Pleasure of walking 
afoot still got the better." 

The inevitable contretemps near the frontier duly 
repeated itself and again the Ambassador and his com- 
pany got into serious trouble at the moment of leaving 
Ottoman territory. A doctor and a Spaniard belonging to 
the party accompanied by some of the guards were search- 
ing for lodgings for the night and came to the house 
of a local Janissary. "Hereupon the Janissary, Master 
of the House, being told that some Christian passengers 
were seeking for a Lodging at his House : came in a 
great Rage with a Club like Hercules's in his Hand, 
and without speaking a Word, strikes the Physician a 
great Blow on the Shoulders as hard as he was able ; 
the Physician, to avoid a second Blow, ran out of the 
House. My Servant looking back saw him lift up his 
Club to strike him also : but he, having a thing like a 
Hatchet in his Hand held it crossways over his Head, 
and so kept off many a lusty Blow, till at last the Handle 
of the Hatchet, by his often striking, began to break. 
Then my Servant was forced to close with the Janizary, 
and was about to cleave his Skull with his Weapon : 
Whereupon the Janizary fled and my Servant not being 
able to overtake him, threw the Hatchet after him, 
which cut him in the Hams and fell'd him to the Ground ; 
by which Accident my People escaped. On hearing 
what had taken place de Sande was tormented lest he 
should be carried back to Constantinople. He was 
much offended with my Servant who had wounded the 
Janizary, especially for saying that he was very sorry 
he had not killed him on the Spot. His Words to him 
were these: 'Honest Henry, Prithee be not so Passion- 
ate ; 'tis no Time or Place to shew thy Valour here ; We 



104 ^ n Embassy to the Grand Turke 

must bear Affronts patiently, without any just Imputa- 
tion of Cowardice whether we will or no ; we are in 
their Power : This unreasonable Passion may bring 
great Mischief to us : perhaps it may occasion us to be 
brought back to Constantinople, and there our whole 
Negotiation may be reversed or at least become very 
dubious. I beseech Thee, therefore, for my Sake among 
the rest, govern thy Passion.' 

"But Henry was deaf to all his Persuasions; he being 
an obstinate Fellow and when angry would not hearken 
to Reason. ' What care I , ' replied he, ' if I had killed him ? 
Did he not design to kill me ? If one of his many Blows 
had gone home he had knock'd me down like an Ox. 
Were I to be blamed if I slew him who would have 
slain me first ? I am sorry with all my heart I did not 
give him his Death's Wound. But for the Future (take 
my Word for it) I'll spare never a Turk of them all; for 
if he assaults me I'll give him as good as he brings, 
though it cost me my Life.'" 

In this dilemma recourse was had to Ibrahim who 
saved the awkward situation in 1 which "honest Henry" 
had landed his masters by interviewing the injured 
Janissary in bed and persuading him that any further 
interference with a gentleman who stood in such favour 
with the Sultan as Busbequius would inevitably cost 
him his head. This bold threat " took down my Janizary's 
crest," Busbequius remarks, "and put him into a terrible 
Panick besides," and so the incident was happily closed. 

Two days later, to the intense relief of de Sande, 
who doubted his safety till he was actually across the 
boundary, Busbequius's party found themselves on 
Austrian soil. 

At Vienna they learnt that the Emperor Ferdinand, 



Home at Last 105 

who had now succeeded Charles V as Emperor, was at 
Frankfort attending the Imperial Diet where the pre- 
liminaries were being arranged for the crowning of his 
son Maximilian as King of the Romans. After an inter- 
change of letters with Ferdinand the party continued 
their journey to Frankfort where Busbequius was re- 
ceived by his master "with all imaginable kindness" and 
made his report of the results of his mission. The gates 
of the town which were by ancient usage shut on the eve 
of the assembly of the Diet were opened by express 
command for the Turkish envoy and he was given a 
special place at the procession from which to see — and 
be duly impressed by — "the glorious and magnificent 
Sight of so many Christian Princes in perfect Unanimity 
passing by with great Pomp and Splendor." A few 
days later the Emperor received Ibrahim and formally 
confirmed the seven years treaty of peace which had 
been secured by the courage and untiring devotion of 
his faithful ambassador during his seven years of exile 
at the court of the Grand Signior. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TWO MARTIAL ADVENTURES 
(i) 

A stroller prying among the bookshops of St Paul's 
Churchyard in the early part of the seventeenth century 
might have had his eye arrested at the Sign of the 
Green Dragon by a couple of recent publications de- 
scribing adventures in Turkey, one a fat little duodecimo 
entitled Voyages in the Levant by Hy. Blunt, Gent., 
the other a mere pamphlet headed "Newes from Turkie 
by a Gentleman of Qualitie." The former describes a 
journey through the Balkans in the train of a Turkish 
Army marching to the wars ; the latter consists of the 
diary of a volunteer who fought in the Polish army 
against the Turks in Bessarabia. Both of the authors 
are entertaining writers and between them they give an 
excellent picture of the Turk in warfare, so their narra- 
tives well deserve a place in these pages. W e will take 
the Voyages first. 

Henry Blunt was a globe trotter with a strong 
philosophical bias and is careful to explain the motives 
which urged him to a tour of Turkey. The knowledge 
of human affairs, says he, " which forme th the strongest 
desire of intellectual complexions " is best advanced by 
the study of peoples who differ most greatly from our 
own. It is natural, he continues, that inhabitants of 
the North- West part of the globe should meet with 
their opposite extremes among the peoples who live in 



A Philosophic Globe-Trotter 107 



the South-East corner. Given these premisses he argues 
that an English philosopher should find the fullest scope 
for research in observing the customs of the Turks. 

He adds to this excellent syllogism another good 
reason for his decision to travel in Turkey. 4< The 
Turke," he says, 4 4 being the only modern people great 
in action, whose Empire hath invaded the world and 
fixt itselfe such firm foundations as no other ever did, 
I was of opinion that he who would beholde the 
present times in their greatest glory could not find a 
better scene than Turkic" 

With these commendable objects in view Blunt set 
forth on his travels. Let us overtake him at Venice 
where he is making his final arrangements for the 
journey and looking for a ship to take him down the 
east coast of the Adriatic, at that time a notable bone 
of contention between the Venetians and the Turks. 

" First," he writes, " I agreed with a janizary to 
find me Dyet, Horse, Coach, Passage and all other 
usual charges as farre as a Venetian Gaily with a 
Caravan of Turks and Jewes bound for the Levant, 
not having any Christians with them beside myself; 
this occasion was right to my purpose, for familiarity 
of bed, board and passage together is more opportune 
to disclose the customes of men than a much longer 
habitation in Cities, where society is not so linked and 
behaviour is more personate than in travell. 

"The Gaily lying that day and night at Lido, set 
saile the next morn and in four and twenty houres 
arrived at Rovinio, a Venetian city in Istria; from 
thence wee came to Zara, which city stands in Dalmatia 
and of all others within the Gulfe is, by reason of its 
situation, most apt to command the whole Adriatique 



io8 Two Martial Adventures 



and therefore hath formerly been attempted by the 
Turke, wherefore the Venetians have fortified it ex- 
traordinarily and now, though in times of firm peace, 
keep it with strong companies of Horse and Foot. 
After a day's view of this place wee sailed to Spalatro, 
a city of Sclavonia, kept by the Venetians as their only 
Emporium there, being plyed successively with two 
Gallies which carry between Venice and that place 
such merchandize as is transported into Turky, or from 
thence brought in. It stands in a most pleasant valley 
on the South side of great mountaines, and in the wall 
towards the sea there appears a great remainder of a 
gallery in Diocletian's Palace. In this Towne the 
Venetians allow the great Turk to take custome of the 
Merchandize whereupon there resides his Emir, or 
Treasurer." 

At Spalato the caravan landed and after resting 
three days took the road across the Dinaric Alps to 
Serajevo, or as the Turks still call it, Bosna Serai. 
But let Blunt describe the journey in his own words. 

" The first journey wee began about Sunset, our 
lodging two miles off wee pitched upon a little hill 
grown over with Juniper, once the seat of Salonae, 
famous for their bravery against Octavius, there is 
now not so much as a mine left excepting a piece of 
Diocletian's Aqueduct. Hence wee passed the Hills 
of Dogliana, far higher then the Alps and so steep was 
our descent for three days together that it was a greater 
precipice than that coming downe from Mont Cenis 
into Piemont. Having rode thus for nine days, wee 
came into a spacious and fruitful plaine which at the 
West, where wee entered, is at least ten miles over, 
but at the North and South immured with ridges of 



An Army on the March 109 

easie and pleasant hills till, by degrees, after six or 
seven miles riding it grows not above a mile broad. 
There found wee the city Saraih which extends from 
the one side to the other and takes up part of both 
Ascents. At the East end stands a Castle upon a steep 
rock commanding the town and the passage Eastward. 

" This is the Metropolis of the Kingdome of Bosnah : 
it is but meanly built and not great, reckoning about 
fourscore Mescheetoes 1 and twenty thousand houses." 

It was here that Blunt and his companions fell in 
with the Turkish army. The Sultan at that time was 
Murad IV, a despot of fierce, relentless temper and 
almost fiendish cruelty who used to exercise the royal 
prerogative of taking ten innocent lives a day by sitting 
in his palace on the Bosphorus and practising " pot- 
shots " in archery on any luckless passer-by. With 
these unpleasant attributes he combined a real genius 
for leadership and organization and succeeded in avert- 
ing the dangerous anarchy which had set in under his 
immediate predecessors and in making the Turkish 
armies more formidable than ever to his Christian 
neighbours. 

At the moment of Blunts arrival in Turkey Murad 
was designing the invasion of Poland and orders had 
gone forth to the Pashas all over the empire to as- 
semble with their troops at the rendezvous at Belgrade. 
The local contingent was starting just as the caravan 
reached Serajevo and, for the sake of safety, they joined 
themselves to it. It is to this accident that we are 
indebted for Blunt's admirable description of an army 
on the march. 

1 Scil. mosques — "mescheetoes" representing a half-way stage in the 
evolution of the word from the arabic masj'zd, a place-of-adoration. 



1 10 Two Martial Adventures 



"At our departure," he says, "wee went along with 
the Bashaw of Bosnah's troopes going for the Warre 
of Poland, they were of Horse and Foot between six 
and seven thousand, but went scattering. The Bashaw 
was not yet in person, and the taking leave of their 
friends spirited many of them with drinke and made 
them fitter company for the Devill than for a Christian. 
Myself, after many launces and knives threatened 
upon mee, was invaded by a drunken Janizary whose 
iron Mace entangling in his other furniture gave mee 
time to flee among the rocks and so escape untouched. 

" Thus marched we ten days through a hilly country, 
cold, uninhabited and in a manner a continuous wood, 
mostly of Pine trees ; at length we reached Valliovah, 
a pretty little Towne upon the confines of Hungary 
where the Camp staying some days, wee left them 
behind. Having to pass a wood near the Christian 
country and doubting it to be (as confines are) full of 
Thieves, wee divided our Caravan of sixscore Horse 
into two parts : half with the persons and goods of 
least esteem we sent on a day before the rest, so that 
the Thieves having a booty might be gone before wee 
came — which happened accordingly. They were robbed 
and one thief and two of our men slain, with some 
hundred Dollars worth of goods lost. The next day 
wee ourselves passed and found sixteen Theeves in a 
narrow passage, before whom wee set a good guard of 
Harquebuse and Pistolls till the weaker sort passed 
by ; so in three days wee came safe to Belgrada." 

Belgrade was not at this period the great outpost 
of the Turkish Empire which it subsequently became 
and still was in the early part of last century when 
Kinglake wrote his grim account of the Styx-like 



A Grisly Tower 



1 1 1 



crossing from Semlin to the plague-stricken portal of 
the Sultan's dominions. A hundred years and more 
before Blunt's time the town had fallen to Suleyman's 
armies which swept beyond and established the frontier 
far to the North ; but already in those days the huge 
bluff which rises wedge-shaped in the angle where the 
Save and Danube meet was topped by the forbidding 
fortress which was often to check the Christian in- 
vader in the later days of Turkey's weakness. The 
town and castle are thus described by Blunt. 

" The City stands most in a bottom encompassed 
Eastward by gentle and pleasant ascents, employed in 
Orchards and Vines ; Southward is an easie Hill, part 
possessed with buildings and the rest a burial-place 
well nigh three miles in compass so full of graves as 
one can bee by another. The West end yields a right 
magnificent aspect by reason of an eminency of land 
jetting out farther than the rest and bearing a goodly 
strong Castle whose walls are two miles about, fortified 
with a dry ditch and out-works. 

" This Castle on the West side is washed by the 
great river Sava, which on the North side of the City 
loses itself in the Danubius, held to be the greatest 
river in the World. 

"The Castle is excellently furnished with Artillery, 
and at the entrance there stands an Arsenal with some 
forty or fifty fair Brasse peeces, most bearing the Armes 
and inscriptionof Ferdinand the Emperour. That which 
to mee seemed strangest in this Castle (for I had liberty 
to pry up and downe) was a round Tower, called the 
Zindana, a cruelty not devised by the Turks and by 
them seldom practised 1 . This Tower is large and 

1 This was the "gauch," a pretty common instrument of death among 
the Turks at that time despite Blunt's statement to the contrary. 



1 1 2 Two Martial A dventures 



round, but severed within into many squares with long 
beams set on end about four foot asunder ; each beam 
was stuck frequent with great flesh-hookes and the 
person condemned was let fall thereon, which gave him 
a quick or lasting misery as he chanced to light : then 
at the bottom the river is let in by grates, whereby the 
corpses are washt away. 

4 'Within this great Castle is another little one with 
works of its own. I had like to have miscarried with 
approaching its entrance, had not the rude noise and 
worse lookes of the guard given mee a timely appre- 
hension to sweeten them with sudden passage and 
humiliation and so get off ; for, as I learnt after, there 
is a great part of the Grand Signior's treasure kept 
there to be ready when he warres on that side the 
Empire, and it is death for any Turk or Christian to 
enter." 

The troops in whose company Blunt was travelling 
had their rendezvous at Belgrade with the contingents 
from Temesvar and Buda, and here the various Pashas 
assembled with their followings of spahis, janissaries 
and akinjis, while awaiting the arrival of the Grand Vizir 
who was marching from the Capital at the head of 
four thousand Timariots. 

As soon as the Grand Vizir reached Belgrade the 
whole army, our friend with them, started for Sofia, 
twelve days distant. Blunt gives a very graphic picture 
of the march of this large force. " The Bashaes," he 
says, " did not all goe in company, but setting forth 
about an houre one after the other, drew out their 
troopes in length without confusion ; yet not in much 
order of Ranke and File, as being near no ememy. In 
this and our former march I much admired that our 



Plain soldiers and luxurious pashas 1 13 



Caravan loaded with Cloths, Silkes and Tissues and 
other rich commodities remained so safe not only in 
the main Army but also among straggling troopes, 
where we often wandered by reason of the need to 
recover the Jewes' Sabboth. But I found the cause to 
be the cruelty of Justice, for Theeves upon the way 
are empaled without delay ; and there was also a San- 
jacke with two hundred Horse who did nothing but 
coast up and down the country and every man who 
could not give a fair account of his being where he 
found him was presently strangled even though not 
known to have offended." 

It was by such drastic measures as these that 
Sultan Murad had succeeded in restoring the iron 
discipline of the Ottoman army which had lapsed into 
licence under the feeble successors of the great Suley- 
man. Judged by the standards of the day, when 
European armies were only just emerging from the 
condition of armed rabbles, the Turkish armies were 
a model of organization. 

" It was a wonder," says Blunt, "to see such a 
multitude of men clear of confusion, violence, want, 
sicknesse or any other disorder ; for, though wee were 
almost threescore thousand and sometimes found not a 
Town in seven or eight days, yet there was such a 
plenty of good Bisket, Rice and Mutton that whereso- 
ever I passed up and down to view the Spahyes and 
others in their tents, they would often make mee sit 
and eat with them very plentifully and well." 

But while the old Turkish traditions of hardiness 
and discipline were more or less rigidly maintained in 
the ranks, there was a very different state of affairs 
among the commanders, who had forsaken the stern 

h. 8 



1 14 Two Martial Adventures 



simplicity of earlier days for a truly Byzantine regime 
of luxury. Not even on active service would the beys 
and pashas willingly abandon the habits of luxury 
which were already sapping the pristine energy of the 
race. Their decadent manners did not escape the 
observant eye of the Englishman travelling in their 
train, who thus describes the routine of their camp life. 

" The severall Courts of the Bashaes were served 
in great state each of them having three or fourscore 
camels, besides six or seven score carts to carry the 
Baggage ; and when the Basha himself took horse he 
had five or six Coaches covered with cloth of gold or 
rich tapestrie to carry his wives, of whom some had 
with them twelve or sixteen, the least ten. When these 
entered the Coach, there were men set on either side 
holding up a rowe of tapestrie to cover them from being 
seen by the people, although they were, after the 
Turkish manner, muffled that nothing but the eye 
could appear. Besides these wives each Basha had as 
many, or likely more, Catamites, which are their serious 
loves : for their wives are used (as the Turks themselves 
told me) but to dress their meat, to laundresse, and 
for reputation. The boys of twelve or fourteen yeares 
old, some of them not above nine, are usually clad in 
velvet or scarlet with gilt Scymitars, and are bravely 
mounted with sumptious furniture : to each of them a 
Souldier appointed who walks by his bridle for his safety. 

" When they are all in order there is excellent Sher- 
bets given to whoever will drink ; then the Basha takes 
horse, before whom ride a dozen or more, who with 
ugly drums, brasse Dishes and wind instruments noise 
along most part of the journey. Before all goe Officers 
to pitch his tent where he shall lodge or dine. When 



A diplomatic refusal 



ii5 



meat is served up, especially at night, all the people 
give three great Shouts." 

It is not surprising that a solitary Englishman 
travelling in such company should meet with strange 
experiences and two adventures which befell Blunt 
are well worth repeating. " That," he says, " which 
secured and emboldened my passage these twelve days 
march was an accident the first night, which was as 
follows : the Campe being pitched by the shoare of 
Danubius, I went (but timorously) to view the service 
about Murad Basha's Court, where one of his favorite 
boyes espying mee to be a stranger gave mee a cup of 
Sherbet. I in thankes, and to make friends at Court, 
presented him with a Pocket Looking glasse in a little 
ivory case with a combe, such as are sold at West- 
minster Hall at four or five shillings a-piece. The 
youth, much taken therewith, ran and shewed it to the 
Bashaw, who presently sent for mee and making me sit 
and drink Cauphe in his presence, called for one that 
spake Italian and demanded of my condition, purpose, 
countrey and many other particulars. It was my fortune 
to hit his humour so right that at last he asked mee if 
my Law did permit me to serve under them against the 
Polacke, who is a Christian, promising with his hand 
on his breast that, if I would, I should be enrolled of 
his Companies, furnished with a good horse and, for 
other necessaries be provided like the rest of his house- 
hold. I humbly thanked him for his favour and told 
him that to an Englishman it was lawful to serve under 
any who were in league with our King, and that our 
King had not only a league with the Gran Signior, 
but continually held an ambassadoure at his Court, 
esteeming him the greatest Monarch in the World, so 

8—2 



1 1 6 Two Martial Adventures 



that my service, especially if I behaved myself not 
unworthy of my Nation, would be exceedingly well 
received in England. I added that the Polacke, though 
in name a Christian, was yet of a sect that for Idolatry 
and many other points wee abhorred, wherefore the 
English had of late helped the Muscovite against him 
and wee would be forwarder under the Turks, whom 
we not only honoured for their glorious actions in the 
world but also loved for the kind commerce of Trade 
which we find amongst them. But as for my present 
engagement to the War, with much sorrow I acknow- 
ledged my incapacity by reason I wanted language, 
which would not only render mee incapable of command 
and so unserviceable, but also endanger mee in tumults, 
where I appearing a stranger and not able to express 
my affection might be mistaken and used harshly. 
For such reasons I humbly entreated his Highnesse 
leave to follow my own poor affaires with an eternal 
oblige to blazon this honourable favour wheresoever 
I came. 

" He forthwith bad mee do as liked me best, where- 
with I took my leave. But such confidence had 
I in his favour that I went often to observe his 
Court." 

The other and far more alarming adventure hap- 
pened when the caravan had halted at Nish to allow 
the Jews of the party to observe their sabbath. 

"A little before night," says Blunt, " Wine having 
possessed a Janizary and one other Turke who rode 
in my Coach, they fell out with two country fellowes 
and by violence took an Axe from one of them, not to 
rob him but for present use thereof ; which being done 
I gave him his axe again as not willing in these parts 



A bloody revenge 



117 



to have so much as an observer's part in a quarrel. 
These fellowes dogg'd us : the Janizary they missed, 
but at midnight came to our Coach where wee slept 
and opened the cover. Whereat I speaking in Italian 
they knew me, wherefore leaving me, they drew the 
Turke by the neck and shoulders and gave him two 
blows with a Scymitar, one over the arm, the other 
upon the head, in such sort that they left him behind 
in great danger of death. They then fled and I was 
found there all bloody and, so taken, had surely the 
next day been executed but that within lesse than halfe 
an houre the hurt person coming to his senses cleared 
mee, telling how the matter came and by whom/' 

In due course Blunt and his fellow travellers arrived 
at " Sophya, the chieffe City of Bulgary," where the 
local characteristic which most impressed him was 
the diminutive size of the doors of the houses which, 
he says, " are little above three feet high, which they 
told me was that the Turkes might not bring their 
Horses, who else would use them for stables in their 
travels ; which I noted for a greater sign of slavery 
than in other places." 

Much to his own disappointment, and equally to 
his readers' loss, Blunt was forced to part company 
with the Turkish army on reaching Sofia, as the 
caravan which he had accompanied thus far broke up 
here, while his own Janissary, having in him, as he 
says, "more of the Merchant than the Souldier," stub- 
bornly refused to go any further for fear of being 
pressed into the war. 

He reluctantly took his leave of the friendly spahis 
who had proved so good-natured towards a chance- 
met ghiaur, and heading southwards continued his 



1 1 8 Two Martial Adventures 



journey towards Constantinople. The remainder of his 
travels and his long disquisitions on Turkish customs 
and morals, though abounding in interest, would be 
out of place in this chapter and it is time to introduce 
the other ' * adventurer " whose acquaintance with the 
fighting Turk, though as intimate as Blunts, was made 
from a very different standpoint. 



CHAPTER IX 



TWO MARTIAL ADVENTURES 

(2) 

Our anonymous diarist was a volunteer enrolled in the 
army of the famous Polish general Chodkiewiez. In 
the year 1622 this army was sent by Sigismund III to 
oppose the advance of Sultan Osman II who was 
marching with a host of Turks against Podolia, accom- 
panied by his ally the Krim of Tartary and the usual 
horde of Tartar auxiliaries. 

The Christians, who on their side were assisted by 
large numbers of Russian cossacks from the Don and the 
Volga, had marched down to the borders of Bessarabia 
and crossing the Dniester at no great distance from 
Kamenets had entrenched themselves round the little 
town of Chocin lying in a bend on the southern bank 
of the river. The Turks, marching northward, had 
crossed the Pruth at the end of August and contact was 
established between the two armies on September 2nd 
on which day, to quote the first entry in the diary, "the 
Turkes and Tartars encamped themselves by us within 
a mile or halfe a mile." The Christian force held a 
bridge-head, apparently of a mile or two radius, with 
wooded country separating their own from the Turkish 
lines. These the enemy, true to their old proud tradi- 
tions, had left unentrenched, " scorning " as the writer 
says, "to quarter themselves within Ditches." The 



120 Two Martial Adventures 



auxiliaries of each army guarded its flanks, while the 
Tartars as usual scoured and pillaged all the surrounding 
country. 

Such was the position of the two forces when fighting 
began. A reconnaissance by the Turks on September 3rd 
led to no results as the Christians had orders "to remain 
within their tents and trenches and play among the 
Turkes with their greate Artillery." 

An incident occured, however, in the evening which 
closely affected the future course of the operations. 
Prince Ladislas, King Sigismund's son, was marching 
into the camp with supplies and reinforcements when 
the bridge broke and left the army stranded on the 
further bank. The results, as will appear later, nearly 
brought disaster to the Polish force. 

On the 4th September the Cossacks repulsed a 
Turkish attack, making "so brave a salley, that they 
put the Turkes to flight even to their tents, with such 
a slaughter, and such a successe, that they surprised 
their Artillery, tooke many Tents, and carried with them 
much furniture, and so returned before dark night with 
the booty, to their own Camp and lodging." 

Three days later the Turks made a more serious 
attempt to break through the lines which is described 
as follows: "The seaventh of September the Turkes 
came upon us againe in the after noone, and very out- 
ragiously in great companies assaulted our Bulwarkes, 
which were yet unperfected, and lay somewhat naked 
to opposition, ascending the same, and taking as it were 
possession : but with equall losse, as it appeared for the 
time, untill the noble Lord Steward of the Kingdome, 
who came there by chance with his troope of Horse, 
set upon them most valiantly, and put them off the walls 



Opening attacks 



121 



to a fore-flight, as farre as the wood scited even before 
the Turkes Campe, whither they followed them in the 
slaughter. The assault endured from noone to night 
and with so fearfull effects that the multitude of the 
slaughtered lay in heapes in the fields. Yea, it was 
remarkable, how all that night the Turkes made a search 
with lighted fire-brands, and other Lamps, for some 
person of account amongst the dead bodies, which as 
some of their owne fugitives affirmed, was one of the 
Viceer Baffas, who, was missing, and could not be 
found." 

Rain interfered on the following day and although 
"both Armies drawne up in battaile array stood looking 
upon one another even to Sunne setting," no more 
fighting actually took place beyond a little affray with 
the Tartar horsemen who " inconsiderately came upon 
the Cossacks againe." 

The Turks meanwhile took advantage of the col- 
lapse of the bridge, which the Poles were making frantic 
efforts to rebuild, to occupy a position in their rear and 
transported their guns across the river to a point where 
they could play upon the Cossacks' quarters and interfere 
with the repairing of the bridge. A brilliant sortie, 
however, drove them out of their new positions, for 
which our hero was duly grateful. " God graunt " says 
he " wee may be thankfull for these things. For with- 
out controversie, Gods onely hand hath protected us, 
that both on the one side the Turke is more remiss 
than his former threatnings, and this present appearance 
promised; and we on the other side, we have had 
greater courages, and better successe than wee could 
any manner of way expect." 

Every success of the Christian arms is in the same 



122 Two Martial Adventures 



way devoutly ascribed to the help of the Almighty. 
On September 15th, for example, the enemy made 
another determined attack ''neither fearing our Artillery, 
nor making accompt of our Trenches: the great Turke 
himselfe being a spectator on an eminent Hill, whose 
youth apprehended the mischiefe but as a sport. For 
without any manner of remorce for the perishing of so 
many thousands, they came forward like furious beasts 
without Discipline or order, and so perished like beasts, 
when the Artillery played upon them, and wee rushed 
out as violently, well armed and appointed, in the smoake 
against them. This Battaile lasted from Noone to Night, 
and the God of Battailes for his mercy sake did frustrate 
and annihilate both the purpose and the rage and fury 
of our Enemies ; nor ended it so, but for his Glories 
sake wee prevailed with a great slaughter, and little 
losse on our side : So that it should seeme all their 
threatnings and fury was in vaine, concerning the 
attempting of our Trenches, and the Angels of the Lord 
spred his wings over our Tents." 

By this time the situation of the Christian forces, 
cut off as they were from all supplies, had grown des- 
perate and on the 1 7th the Great Lord General held a 
" Martiall Counsell with the Lord Senators, Dukes, 
Governors and Captaines, together with the General of 
the Cossacks with all his Colonels and Officers" and put 
the position before them, explaining that unless pro- 
visions could be brought into the Camp within a few 
days they would be faced with starvation. His doughty 
officers after hearing what their leader had to say "with 
one voyce and unanimity of Spirit concluded and agreed 
rather to die manfully in the field than to goe backe 
one foot of ground or give the Enemy cause of pre- 



Tricking the Tartar 



123 



sumption." This spirited resolution was followed by 
prompt action. A nobleman named Koskakorffski 
volunteered to make an expedition to Kamenets and 
try to smuggle in stores from there. He left the camp 
with a small escort but not without exciting the attention 
of the Turks who, being thus forewarned, prepared to 
fall on the convoy on their way back, " advancing a 
strong Battalion with many shot on foote, and divers 
field Pieces to intercept his returne, and so lay betweene 
the Towne and our Campe, being not 1 5 myle assunder." 

With the enemy holding the road in force there 
seemed little or no hope of the convoy breaking their 
way through, but in the end the feat was accomplished 
by a very neat ruse de guerre on the part of Koska- 
korffski. Let me quote the incident in full. 

" When the towne sawe the fields thus overspred 
with Tartars so well appointed to intercept the Carriages, 
considering nevertheless the necessity of relieving the 
Campe, the Lord Koskakorffski with the other Cap- 
taines, thought it best to put a trick upon their Enemies, 
and deceive them if they could by a petty Stratagem, 
which they thus effected: When all thinges were ready 
for their returne within Eight dayes after their departure 
from the Campe, they set forward backe againe with 
many Waggons of Wine and Corne, and so issued out 
with certaine Troopes well appointed, whom they flancked 
with light Waggons full of Strawe and Hay, yet not so 
full but they went in a manner as fast as the Horse. 
Which when the Tartars perceived, they brought up 
their Pieces and came forward with their shot, to dis- 
rancke these Cartes, verily supposing the maine booty 
was in the midst of the troopes: but the Cartes went so 
fast, and the Horse upon the trot, that they were quickly 



1 24 Two Martial A dventures 



out of shot of their Ordinance, and made the Tartars 
weary to follow them. Yet as they were instructed they 
made divers stands, as if the Waggons ment to take 
some rest, and then as the Tartars approached they 
would trot away againe, and thus they continued till 
night: by which time the Tartars were quickly drawne 
from the Towne, and thought it worke enough to secure 
the field Pieces from surprizing : When night came, then 
issued out the Lord Koskakorffski with the mayne 
Convoy indeed, which consisted of Corne, Oyle, Wine, 
Honey, and Cattle, and went a cleane contrary way 
unknowne to the Enemy, though somewhat about, to 
a Towne called Sarno Kovonicie, where he was ac- 
comodated to the River of Ister [i.e. Dniester]. But 
by that time the Turkes knew how they were deceived 
and, exasperated with very rage, ranne downe in whole 
Companies to beset the River on both sides, and brought 
their Ordinance to play upon the Boates, who kept the 
streame, but the most were passed by ere they came ; 
and the rest kept the Channell, which was heere so 
broad, that the Ordinance played on the Banckes and 
could not doe them much harme : Yet did the Turkes 
follow them as farre as our Trenches, but we having 
certaine Towers well fortefied on both sides the River, 
played out of them so violently, that wee cut off some of 
them in their speediness,and those who were within reach 
of the shot of our Trenches, were faine to recoyle, and so 
the Turkes and Tartars returned with great sorrow on 
all sides to be thus disappointed, and we entertained 
our friends with joy on every side to be thus releeved." 

Although the Christian army was in the position of 
a beleaguered garrison, they were not content to remain 
wholly on the defensive but from time to time ventured 



A mediaeval trench raid 125 



on night attacks which, from the detailed descriptions 
given of them, bore a singular resemblance to the 
organised trench raids which were a marked feature 
of the fighting on the western front during the Great 
War. Here is the account of one such attack. 

"The 1 8th of September certaine Companies of 
Foot made a salley out of the Cossacks quarter in the 
night upon the Turkes Army, which was done so 
secretly and suddenly, that they overturned many 
Tents, ransacked divers Cabins, and killed some hun- 
dreds of men with Javelings, Pollaxes, and Launces, 
without the report of a Peece, or carrying any Artillery 
with them : yea, herein they were so fortunate, that they 
returned with great spoil, without the losse of a man. 
The next night they performed as much, and with the 
like stratagem set upon the Bridge they had newly 
builded and erected, and slew Corkan BafTaw, to whose 
custody and charge it was committeed. They also killed 
many Turkes, tooke nine prisoners, and returned with 
great spoils and a rich prey, wherein were divers gar- 
ments furred with costly Furres." It is noteworthy that 
it was the enterprising Cossacks who were responsible 
for these bold ventures. 

Escaped prisoners from the Turkish camp were 
continually creeping through the lines with news of the 
enemy's preparations, and through them the Poles re- 
ceived warning of the Sultan's determination to throw 
his whole force into a desperate and decisive assault on 
one of the last days of the month. 

While waiting nervously for the promised attack, 
the Christian army suffered a heavy blow in the loss of 
their brave General who on the 24th "after labouring 
long in his sickness, and being wearied and spent againe 



126 Two Martial Adventures 



with intollerable convulsions and distemperature of the 
ayre, yeelded to the commaund of a higher Generall, and 
so died in the Camp." The Quarter- Master General, 
as the next Senior Officer, took over the command. 

The Turks' "big push" was duly launched on the 
2 7th when, says our hero, "the Emperour of Turks made 
a great preparation to set upon us on all sides, drawing 
out from their severall Quarters, both Horse, Foot, and 
Artillery, to oppresse and expugne us with an unresist- 
able power and because he would make, as it were, sure 
worke of the matter, he acquainted Tartar Ckocin, and 
he, either of necessity obeying or out of custome con- 
senting, by breake of day brought all his Tartars to the 
place appointed for the expugnation. Having strongly 
mounted divers great Peeces and placed their gabbions 
about them, the Turkes played fearfully over our heads 
into our Camp. Then they transported over the river 
thirty more great Ordnance which beat continually upon 
ours, the Lissavonians, and the Cossacks Tents, and 
that for the space of divers hours, sending likewise fiery 
Speares, burning Darts, and sulphury Balls amongst us. 

" After this, with strange assaults and fearfull 
violence, they pressed upon the two special passages of 
our Camp : in a word, wee were all in Armes, and the 
Cannons played on both sides as farre as they could for 
hurting those in their owne Quarters. At last on a 
suddaine with accustomed cry the Tartars gave on, and 
were ready to scale the trenches and enter in at the 
Ports. Then followed the Janizaries, as their seconds, 
and lastly, the Spahies and Chawses on Horseback, who 
by their bravery made themselves sure of the entrance, 
for the truth is we gave ground, and lost many men : 
For they pressed so thick upon us, that our shot did no 



The "big push" 



127 



good, and wee came to handey blowes within our owne 
trenches, till certaine Cossacks on that quarter, and 
Masters of Pole on ours, finding the Tartars disordered 
and disarmed, rushed upon them with fury that they 
were driven as fast back againe as they came in and 
they also bare down the Janizaries and pushed them 
much with their violence. 

" Yet the Turkes still sent fresh men forward who 
with a strange pertinacity and unchangeable valour 
continued until Sun-set in the expugnation and nigh 
made a shrewd adventure and opened a gap of entrance 
into our country." 

The Tartars meanwhile had found a congenial role 
in the battle by crossing the Dniester and making a 
sudden descent upon the Polish army's baggage lines 
from the rear. " They thought," the writer explains, 
- 1 that we had left the backside of our Campe naked and 
undefended, but when they came, they found the Carts, 
Waggons, and Carriages, so strongly to Barricade it, 
that they thought it in vaine to hazard themselves, and 
so returned disappointed : yet because they would be 
doing, they threw wild-fire amongst the carriages, and 
put the cattle in a great feare, whose roarings and bel- 
lowings amazed us much, and in a manner begged reliefe 
at our hands, so that we thought it meete to send out 
certain Troopes of Horse, who fell upon them so oppor- 
tunely, that they let in 200 Polaxes amongst them, yea 
the very Pyoners came with their Pixes and hutches, 
and played their parts like men and Souldiers: So that 
in the end wee compelled them to swim over the River 
backe againe." 

Throughout the whole day the Turks continued 
the struggle but without success for, as the diary 



128 Two Martial Adventures 



modestly puts it, "God bethanked, with our accustomed 
constancy we kept our ground, and though with some 
losse constrayned them to let goe the hold they had, and 
in the end with a great shame and a greater slaughter, 
they hid their heades within their owne hedges." 

Thus the attack was foiled and Poland saved from 
the Turkish irruption. The relief which their victory 
brought to the heroic defenders finds words in a quaint 
outburst with which the diarist's account of the great 
battle closes. 

He reviews the terrible consequences which must 
have ensued if the enemy had broken through. 1 'God 
knows," he says, " whither this inundation would have 
runne. For you see, when raging Seas beate upon the 
bankes of low ground, if they prevaile in bearing them 
before them, whole Countries are swallowed up in the 
Vast paunch of the Ocean : But the same God, that 
puts a hooke in the nostrils of Leviathan, and bindeth 
Behemoth with a chayne, set a limitation for these 
raging Mahumetans and furious and barbarous Tar- 
tarians, over which they should not passe at this time." 

Sultan Osman was furious at his defeat and for some 
days sulked in his Camp where, according to the re- 
ports of Christian Prisoners who subsequently returned 
thence, he was " so franticke that he would excruciate 
and torment himselfe with actions of distemperature, as 
throwing of his Turbane, beating his breast, and kicking 
his very Basshawes, who durst not reply, but were sub- 
ject to a very sauish prostitution." His thoughts turned 
to peace however and, not daring to risk the displeasure 
of the Janizaries by openly beginning negotiations, he 
privily conveyed to the Christian Commander that if he 
would send plenipotentiaries to the Turkish Camp they 



A Cumbrous Peace Offering 129 



would find the Turks ready to settle terms. So after 
holding a Council of War the General elected two Com- 
missioners "to tractate with the Turkes" and sent them 
accompanied by " 20 of the best Gentlemen of the Campe 
well furnished with a flag of truce." Their reception was 
as follows. 

"By this time the Trumpers had given warning of 
their accesse, and when they approached very neere the 
Turkes Camp 200 Spahies and Chawses on Horse- 
backe with Velvet Gownes, rich silver Maces, and brave 
Turbanes, came to entertaine them, and bring them by 
way of conduction through the first Guard of Janizaries, 
and so through many Troopes of Horse, and field Pieces 
mounted on delicate Carriages, till they came to the 
Tent of the Viceer, who welcomed him in his Masters 
behalfe: but according to former custome hee must 
attend a while, ere hee could have Answer from the 
Grand Signeur himselfe, and peradventure not speak 
with him at all : For you must know, that however they 
were glad of composition, yet the Turke would not dis- 
cover any inclination to Peace, but if he did condiscend, 
it was meerly out of Heroyick compassion, not any 
necessity of his part." 

Six days were spent in discussing terms, but on 
October 9th peace was signed on the basis of the earlier 
treaty which the ambitious young Sultan had upset when 
he led his army against the Poles, and the Turkes with- 
drew again over the river Pruth. 

The settlement was sealed by the usual exchange of 
gifts between the principals, King Sigismund sending 
" dogs and certaine payres of guns made in the Low- 
Countries," while the Sultan " regratulated " with a 
present of a living elephant. 



CHAPTER X 



A PERSIAN INTERLUDE 

A collection of Italian "viaggi" published at Venice 
in 1543 contains the story told by himself of the " Mag- 
nifico Messer Josophat Barbaro's" mission to Uzun 
Hassan, the King of Persia. As the narrative bears 
only indirectly on Turkey some excuse is needed, per- 
haps, for its inclusion in the present volume. I can only 
plead that the book which contains it happens to be 
among the Turkish collection mentioned in my preface 
and that it gives an undoubtedly interesting glimpse of 
Turkey's great Mohammedan neighbour. 

" The long Hassan " (to render his name into 
English) was indeed closely related to the Turks as 
leader of the "White Sheep," a Turcoman horde centred 
round Diar Bekir. By dint of fighting he had made him- 
self 'King' of Persia — at that time barely emerging 
from the wreckage of Tamerlane's empire — though he 
had a rival who challenged his title from the distant 
capital of Herat. A bond of union had arisen between 
Venice and this Turcoman chief in their common enmity 
to the Turks who were busily engaged in chasing the 
Venetians out of the archipelago while at the same time 
expanding their empire eastward at Persia's expense. 

With the object of arranging for a concerted plan of 
action against Turkey, the Signoria of Venice deputed 
Messer Barbaro to travel to Tabriz and discuss things 



Venice to Tabriz 



with Hassan. He left Venice accordingly in 1471 and 
sailed to Cyprus, the first stage of his journey, with a 
strong naval escort. There he landed and exchanged 
civilities with King James, the last of the dynasty 
established on the throne of Cyprus by our own King 
Richard at the time of the third crusade. Incidentally 
he lent a hand in the intrigue then forward for annexing 
the island to Venice while at the same time making 
arrangements for his long overland journey through 
Asia Minor. 

Luckily for him the Ottomans had not yet consoli- 
dated the whole of the Anatolian provinces, and the 
Sultan of Caramania, whose coast faces on to Cyprus, 
was at that particular moment at war with Mohammed 
the Conqueror. Barbaro first of all aided the Sultan by 
landing a force of marines and reducing a couple of 
forts held by Ottoman garrisons, then disembarked his 
own party near Mersina and started on his perilous 
journey. 

His way lay through Adana, Urfa and Mardin to 
Sirt on the Tigris. We need not stay to accompany 
him on his route except to mention his naive belief that 
Mardin, perched on the top of its towering cliff, was of 
such an altitude that no bird could fly over it, and his 
delight in Sirt — which must in his day have been a 
remarkably flourishing town — with its beautiful mosques 
and fountains and bridge over the Tigris so high above 
the stream that, to use his own phrase, a full rigged 
ship with all sail set could easily have passed under it. 

On entering Kurdistan Barbaro was struck by the 
murderous appearance of the Kurds. He was soon to 
make an intimate acquaintance with these inveterate 
brigands. 

9—2 



132 



A Persian Interlude 



The caravan was crossing the great mountain range 
between Van and Urmia 1 when it was attacked by a 
party of them who killed Barbaro's cancelliero, as well 
as the Persian ambassador returning home from Venice 
in Barbaro's company, and stole all the baggage. Bar- 
baro himself was slightly wounded while escaping on 
horseback up the mountain side; he succeeded, how- 
ever, in getting clear away and, falling in presently with 
a band of pilgrims, accompanied them, by way of Khoy, 
safely to Tabriz. 

Barbaro had left Venice well loaded with presents 
from the Signoria for Uzun Hassan — gold and silver 
plate, silks and woollens and rolls of the famous scarlet 
cloth which was a "specialite" of his native town. All 
these, with his personal belongings, had remained in 
the hands of the Kurds and he arrived at Hassan's 
residence utterly destitute, with nothing but the clothes 
he stood in and not even a hat. He sent a messenger 
at once to Uzun Hassan to acquaint him with his mis- 
adventures and the present sorry plight in which he 
found himself. The Shah sent his condolences with a 
promise to make good his losses, a couple of suits of 
silk, a piece of cotton for a turban (one wonders what 
sort of a job the old Venetian made of it) and a sum of 
twenty ducats. 

Being thus restored to self-respect, Barbaro went to 
pay his respects to Hassan and present the letters he 
had brought with him from Venice. 

His description of Hassan's court gives an im- 
pression of barbaric luxury touched with the whimsical 

1 By a rather curious coincidence this is precisely the place where the 
author of the present book was similarly attacked and wounded by Kurdish 
tribesmen in the autumn of 191 4. 



A Lively Tournament 



133 



delicacy which is characteristic of all things Persian. 
The Shah lived in a kind of garden palace which, 
though beautifully appointed, did not at all reflect the 
stolid splendours of the Ottoman court. On going to 
his audience Barbaro was led into a walled quadrangle, 
carefully turfed, with a sand path leading up to a 
loggia in the centre of one side. A fountain and basin 
occupied the middle of the loggia and by the side of 
the basin Hassan sat on a gold embroidered cushion 
with his scimitar and a water-jug ready to hand, 
sheltered from the sun by an overhanging canopy 
supported from the branches of trees. The floor was 
strewn with beautiful carpets and the walls covered 
with painted tiles. A company of singers and musicians 
playing on harps, lutes, and cymbals, discoursed music 
at the further end of the loggia. 

After settling affairs of state, Hassan courteously 
invited the Venetian envoy to a tournament to be held 
on the following day on the great maidan. Barbaro 
accepted and betook himself next day to the place, 
where he found a crowd of four or five thousand on- 
lookers, half of them mounted like himself on horse- 
back. A number of different sort of games and displays 
took place, but the great feature of the day was a wolf- 
fight. The wolves were led on by cords tied to their 
hind-legs and loosed one by one against the wolf-fighter. 
The latter was armed with a knife and had his left 
forearm swathed in a sash. With his padded limb he 
warded off the wolf's attacks till he found a chance of 
driving his knife into the creature's heart. Incidentally 
the savage rushes of the maddened beasts so terrified 
the spectators' horses, that, as Barbaro recounts, they 
broke and fled in every direction, falling over each 



134 



A Persian Interlude 



other and plunging many of their riders into a canal 
bordering the maidan. A similar sort of entertainment, 
he mentions, took place every Thursday for the Shah's 
diversion. 

Shortly after Barbara's arrival an embassy reached 
Tabriz from one of the Indian princes, who, as a de- 
scendant . of Tamerlane, was related to the Persian 
ruler. The envoys brought magnificent presents con- 
sisting largely of wild animals and they paraded these 
in front of Hassan and his officers, Barbara also being 
present. The beasts were led past by keepers, the more 
dangerous of them being secured by chains. There were 
a lion and lioness, a very fierce leopardess, two civet 
cats, a giraffe ("animal bellissimo" Barbara calls it, and 
proceeds to describe it as a long-necked creature, short 
haired like an ass, with horns like a goat, a head like 
a stag, but "piu polita" and a tongue the length of one's 
arm), cages of parrots and cockatoos, and lastly a couple 
of elephants who performed tricks such as levelling 
trees by leaning against them. 

Afterwards the chief envoys sat down with the Shah 
in the loggia and had the inanimate presents brought 
in by their servants. A string of a hundred slaves 
came with bales of cotton, six men with fine silks thrown 
over their arms, nine with silver cups full of rare stones, 
others with porcelain basins and ewers, aloes and sandal 
wood and finally a number of men carrying poles with 
packets of specie slung from them. 

After the ceremony the Shah sent for Barbara to 
come to his private room, a delightful little chamber 
with walls panelled in silk and a beautiful door of sandal 
wood inlaid with gold wire and pearls. Here he ex- 
hibited his treasures, rubies from India, pearls from the 



A People on the March 



135 



Persian Gulf, vases from China and antique cameos, 
probably recovered from Hellenic or Sassanian ruins. 
One of these last was engraved with the head of a 
Greek goddess and Barbaro was much entertained when 
the Shah, in showing it him, asked if it were not a 
portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary! 

About this time one of Hassan's sons raised the 
standard of revolt at Shiraz and his father marched 
south to quell the rebellion. Barbaro went also and 
describes the march, or rather one should say the mi- 
gration, for the Shah and his Turcomans, following 
their nomadic instincts, took most of their property, in- 
cluding their families, with them. The endless caravan, 
half-a-day's journey from first to last, meandered across 
Persia, the men and women on horseback and the 
babies in paniers. Barbaro enumerates the animals 
which composed the train ; 20,000 riding horses, many 
covered with armour, 5000 horses of burden, an equal 
number of pack-mules, 2000 donkeys and 30,000 camels. 
The actual fighting force consisted of 15,000 swords- 
men, 1000 archers, and 8000 common soldiers on 
foot, with a host of armourers, cobblers, tailors and 
other supernumeraries. The children of under ten alone 
numbered 6000. For sporting purposes there were 100 
hunting leopards, 3000 greyhounds (Persia is the home 
of the breed) and 200 falcons "gentili e villani." Two 
thousand led-horses beautifully caparisoned belonging 
to the various chieftains, accompanied the army, and to 
crown all there were no fewer than eight thousand two- 
humped dromedaries adorned with bells and trappings 
embroidered in gold with Koranic texts, which carried 
no loads and were for pure ostentation. The Shah 
with a personal guard of 500 horsemen was preceded 



136 



A Persian Interlude 



by numbers of runners continually shouting to clear the 
road. 

They marched down through Kum, famous then as 
now for its blue-glazed earthenware, Ispahan, a mere 
mound of ruins ever since Tamerlane had, a hundred 
years before, razed it level with the ground and mas- 
sacred every living soul within it, and Yezd (at that 
time the great emporium where merchants met from 
Turkey, Tartary and Hindustan), till the rebel prince 
was finally met and subdued on the borders of Fars. 
Then the great host returned again in the same manner 
to its starting place. On the march the traditions of 
his cruel predecessor were worthily upheld by the Shah, 
who on one occasion, learning that a certain old chief- 
tain was intriguing with his son, had him brought before 
him trussed and skewered like a partridge! 

Barbaro had one more experience after returning to 
Tabriz which is worth recording. It was a sort of 
fHe champetre to celebrate the circumcision of two of 
Hassan's sons. A large number of tents were set up 
for the merry-makers in a field of young corn. First 
there were wrestling bouts, which must have been of a 
peculiarly brutal nature as Barbaro mentions that the 
champion was excused from wrestling because he had 
killed several of his opponents on the last occasion. 
Then there were foot-races and, lastly, races for the 
professional "runners" who, naked except for a leather 
apron and oiled all over 4 'to preserve their energies," 
trotted incredible distances, some of the Shah's own 
runners being actually credited with ten days on end 
without a stop. 

The prizes were heaped in one of the tents and 
consisted chiefly of silk dresses and saddles. Some had 



An embarrassing present 137 

a touch of the grotesque, as, for instance, an enormous 
sugar-loaf hat covered with pompons> which stood on the 
ground in front of the tent. When the time came the 
Shah sent a servant to clap it on the head of the winner 
who was then commanded to dance in it before the 
assembled company. Barbaro himself, with other dis- 
tinguished guests, was presented in the course of the 
proceedings with an enormous iced cake brought in by 
two men on a large wooden tray and surrounded with 
little cups of fruit and coloured sweets. He does not 
tell us how he disposed of such a "white elephant." 

Shortly after these festivities there arrived at Tabriz 
another embassy which had travelled from Venice by 
the very arduous and circuitous route through Austria 
and Russia, and Messer Josophat Barbaro returned home 
to his native city to render an account of his mission 
and describe to the wondering Venetians the marvels 
of Uzun Hassan's Court. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE SULTAN'S NAVY 

There is a story which used to be current among 
"Frankish" circles at Pera of a Turkish High Admiral 
who was sent, much against his nature, on a cruise to 
Malta and, on returning some months later, was sum- 
moned to give a report to the Sultan. "Well," said the 
Monarch, "what sort of a place is Malta?" The ad- 
miral's answer was terse and conclusive; all he said was 
il Malta y ok" which, freely rendered, means "there ain't 
no Malta." He had searched for it in vain all round 
the Mediterranean! 

The story owed much of its zest to the sight familiar 
to dwellers in Constantinople of the Turkish fleet 
perennially anchored in the Golden Horn, and I quote 1 
it here merely as a parable of Turkish inaptitude for 
navigation. Yet in Suleyman's day the Turkish navy 
swept the ocean and on one occasion at least put to 
rout the combined navies of the great Mediterranean 
Powers. The paradox is easily explainable ; the Turkish 
navy of the old days was hardly Turkish at all ; half of 
it was corsair and the remaining half recruited almost 
entirely from among Christians, renegades and prisoners. 
The horrible life of the Christian galley-slaves is de- 
scribed in the concluding chapters of this book. They 
shared their miserable existence with convicts from the j' 
jails and ordinary slaves hired out by their lawful I 



Dutch Courage 



139 



owners for the summer months — the only part of the 
year in which the fleet was ordinarily mobilized — at so 
many aspers the season. One may note in passing 
a curious consequence of this method of recruitment, 
which was that on board Turkish men-of-war objects 
were named, and orders were given, not in Turkish but 
in the bastard Italian which serves to the present day 
as the lingua franca of the Levant 1 . Only the militia 
carried in the larger ships was genuinely Turkish, being 
raised mainly by the same system as prevailed in the 
army, a certain proportion of za'ims and timariots holding 
their lands as sea-fiefs and being pledged to render 
service, either in person or by proxy, at sea instead of 
on land. 

The best of the ships themselves, especially in the 
seventeenth century, were prizes captured from the 
Christians. Blunt, influenced perhaps by national pre- 
judice, declares that in his time the majority of them 
were Dutch, because, he asserts, the Dutchmen, who 
did a large carrying trade in the Mediterranean, lacked 
the pluck to fight and when attacked took advantage 
of the Turkish custom of liberating the crews of ships 
which struck their colours without firing a shot. English 
ships, he adds, besides being better armed, were less 
sought after by the Turks because they were slow goers 
and consequently of less use as men-of-war. He took 
care, however, to disabuse the Turks of any miscon- 
ceptions they might form of England's naval power, and 
when asked how his country could claim the mastery of 
the seas when possessing such slow craft, answered 
"that these ships which came into their [the Turks'] 

1 By a curious contradiction we, on our side, derive the term "admiral" 
from the Turkish corsairs, corrupting it from the arabic Amir-ul-bahr. 



140 The Sultan's Navy 



Seas were private merchantmen, slugs only made for 
burthen and weather : but for Warre our King had 
a Navy Royall of another frame, the best for sail and 
fight in the World." 

An amusing sketch which he gives elsewhere of 
Turkish sailors on a small sailing ship in which he 
travelled as passenger deserves quotation for its own 
sake. " I," he says, " who had often proved the Bar- 
barisme of other nations at sea, and above all of our 
owne, supposed myself among Beares, untill by experi- 
ence I found the contrarie, and that, not only in ordinary 
civilitie but with so ready service, such a patience and 
so sweet and gentle a way as made me doubt if it was 
a dreame or reall. If at any time I stood in their way 
or encombered their ropes, they would call me 'janum 1 ,' 
a term of great affection among them and that with an 
incline, a voice and a gesture so respectful as assured 
me their other words (which I understood not) were of 
the same strain. 

" Nor were they irreligious ; thus all the Voyage 
morning and evening they would salute the Sunne with 
three great shouts and a priest saying a kind of Litanie, 
every prayer ending with 'Macree Kirchoon' (.mV) that 
is 'be Angels present' and the people answered 'Amen, 
Amen.'" 

In the same way that the Turks depended on their 
Tartar auxiliaries in land warfare, they leaned — but in 
a far greater degree — on their corsair allies at sea. 
The link between them was naturally a loose one, for 
the Barbary corsairs, even when nominally under the 
Sultans dominion, could act pretty well as they liked 

1 i.e. "my soul," commonly used between Turks in the same sense as 
we say "old fellow." 



Khaireddin Barbarossa 



with but little fear of retribution. They appreciated, 
however, the value of Ottoman prestige and both parties 
gained by uniting their forces against the Christian 
world. The haughty Turk looked, indeed, somewhat 
askance at his ally as a professional pirate, but he was 
glad enough of his help against the Venetian or Spaniard 
and by no means disdained a share in casual plunder. 
The Turks owed a great deal also to the fourteen Beys 
of the Archipelago who contributed a galley a-piece to 
the Sultan's fleet whenever it put to sea; in the summer 
season when they joined the navy the prizes they took 
were claimed by the Sultan, but the Beys were free to 
pirate what they could on their own account in the 
winter months. 

The mention of the corsairs brings us to that romantic 
figure, the greatest of Turkish sea captains, Khaireddin 
Barbarossa. Barbarossa's life is so much an epitome of 
Turkey's sea power that, even at the risk of repeating 
facts already well known to the reader, I will include a 
short sketch of his career. His autobiography, written 
in his old age at the command of his master, Suleyman 1 1 , 
has been handed down in a paraphrased form in the 
pages of Hajji Khalifa, a Turkish naval historian of the 
early seventeenth century (whose work was translated 
into English about a hundred years ago by James 
Mitchell), so we are fortunate in being able to go to the 
fountain head for our knowledge. 

Khizr Khaireddin and his brothers, Oruj, Ishak and 
Elias were the sons of a peasant of Mitylene of 
Christian descent, and like most of the Archipelago 
islanders, took to the sea at an early age. In other 
words they were born pirates. In an encounter with a 
Rhodian galley (the island was at the time still in the 



142 The Sultans Navy 



possession of the Knights) one of the brothers, Elias, 
lost his life and the others were taken prisoners and were 
for some time slaves in Rhodes. Ishak from this point 
vanishes from the scene but Khizr and Oruj, having es- 
caped from Rhodes and obtained from Sultan Bayezid 
the Turkish equivalent of letters of marque, set up in 
partnership as privateers. They had spent a few profit- 
able years in this occupation, ranging the Aegean by 
summer and wintering snugly at Alexandria, when the 
new Sultan, Selim, issued a decree against free-lancing 
pirates, and the brothers were driven to offer their ser- 
vices to Sultan Hassan of Tunis, the last of the in- 
dependent dynasty of the Beni Hafs. They were given 
by him a stronghold on the coast and a free hand to 
plunder Christian shipping on condition of surrendering 
half the proceeds to the Sultan. Those were the golden 
days of Barbary piracy and the brothers soon amassed 
a respectable fortune, sometimes taking as many as 
20 ships and 3000 prisoners in a single month. The 
prisoners — ravaged for the most part from small fishing 
villages on the Italian coast — they sold wholesale in 
the Tunisian slave markets at a florin ahead. 

Their ambition grew with their success and they 
presently transferred themselves to Algiers where Khizr 
proclaimed himself as an independent sultan. The 
establishment of such a hornet's nest on the opposite 
coast seriously alarmed the Spaniards who sent a fleet 
to annihilate the upstart sultan. The fleet and not the 
sultan, suffered annihilation, the engagement, according 
to Hajji Khalifa's account, resulting as follows: 

" The Admiral Ferdinand from Spain entered the 
harbour with a fleet of one hundred and ten ships. 
Khair-ad-din immediately came into the harbour and 



A Merciless Victor 143 

after a hot engagement entirely routed the infidels. 
The Admiral's ship struck on the sand, when, in despair, 
he and six hundred infidels jumped overboard, and with 
thirty-six captains, and in all about three thousand men, 
were made prisoners. Two prisons underground were 
rilled with them, and the city was crowded with those 
assigned to the natives. Some of them formed a con- 
spiracy, and had made arrangements for their escape 
but were detected. Soon after a messenger arrived from 
Spain offering 100,000 ducats for the ransome of the 
thirty-six officers. To this the Ulemas would not give 
their consent, saying that the captains being expert in 
naval matters, and everyone of them brave fellows, the 
sum ought to be doubled : this, however, was not effected. 
Khair-ad-din then sought some pretence for having 
them killed; and when he heard of their attempt to es- 
cape, ordered a general execution. For the body of the 
Admiral Ferdinand seven thousand florins were offered ; 
but the Moslem considering it improper to deal in car- 
cases, threw it into a deep well." 

It was soon after this event that the first encounter 
took place between Barbarossa and his life-long enemy 
Andrea Doria. 

The appearance on the scene of the great Genoese 
patriot is described with characteristic bombast by the 
Turkish historian. " When the infidel could no longer 
navigate the sea," he says, "and there was no safety 
along their coasts, the King of Spain called a council 
to determine what measures to adopt against Barbarossa. 
Andrea Doria, one of the most valiant admirals of Spain 
taking his hat in his hand said, if the king of France 
would give him twenty of his galleys, he would venture 
to attack Barbarossa." The French ships were supplied 



144 The Sultan's Navy 



and Doria was about to set out for Algiers when Khair- 
eddin forestalled the attack by sailing with his corsair 
fleet into the Gulf of Lyons. He laid an ambush off 
Marseilles but his plans were defeated by the brave 
captain of a vessel, captured by the corsairs on its way 
to Majorca with a cargo of cheeses, who escaped and 
gave information to the Christian Commander-in-chief. 
Doria, however, feeling too weak to fight Barbarossa 
until he had received a reinforcement of several galleys 
from his native town which were on their way to join 
him, slipped by the corsairs and took shelter in a Spanish 
port. Barbarossa getting in his turn intelligence of the 
enemy's movements, waylaid the Genoese detachment 
and captured them with all their crews, including, as 
the record says, " twenty men of rank and captains and 
a hundred and twenty brave infidels who wore golden 
chains about their necks." A ransom of 20,000 pieces 
of gold was offered for the prisoners by the Genoese, 
but Barbarossa refused to deal and put the unlucky 
victims to death en masse. 

For some time the two great seamen fought for the 
upper hand in the Western Mediterranean, manoeuvring 
endlessly to cut off each other's ships and pitting their 
wits against each other in every manner of ruse. Doria, 
for instance, sent one of his officers with a barge of 
valuable merchandise to cruise about off Algiers with 
the express purpose of getting captured and giving a 
false report of his intention to attack the town. Which 
duly happened but with small gain to Doria, for 
Barbarossa saw through the stratagem and weaved a 
plot of his own, ostensibly unmanning his fleet and 
digging trenches as though in preparation for the attack, 
until the crew of the captured barge, whom he generously 



Barbarossa Becomes Capudan Pasha 145 



allowed to return home, had left with the news, when 
he at once mobilized his ships and slipped off to raid 
the Italian coast. 

In the meantime Selim, who had put the embargo 
on Barbarossa's early Aegean exploits, died and Suleyman 
came to the throne. He at once showed the strength 
of his arm by capturing Rhodes and attacking Vienna. 
Barbarossa, seeing how the wind was blowing, took the 
great decision of his life and abandoned the freedom of 
a sea-rover and independent corsair-king in favour of 
the more secure dignity of a liege of the Ottoman Sultan. 
He therefore left his brother Oruj in charge of Algiers 
and sailed with most of his fleet and presents of fabulous 
value to Constantinople, where he paid homage to Suley- 
man. The Sultan at once made him Capudan Pasha, or 
Lord High Admiral, at the same time confirming him in 
the sultanate of Algiers under his own suzerainty. Barba- 
rossa lost no time in taking in hand the Turkish fleet 
which he entirely reorganised, building numbers of new 
ships and adding his own Algerian vessels. With this 
remodelled fleet, the greatest the Turks had ever known, 
Barbarossa launched a series of marauding expeditions 
into all parts of the Mediterranean, terrorizing all 
Christian shipping and ravaging the coasts of Italy, 
France and Spain, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands and 
even the Adriatic coast. A more serious campaign for 
the capture of Corfu, undertaken with a hundred and 
thirty-five galleys and thirty thousand sailors and ac- 
companied by Suleyman in person and two of his sons, 
failed after a determined siege, and the Venetians suc- 
cessfully repulsed several attempts against Crete ; the 
Turks captured, on the other hand, a number of the 
Venetian islands in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 



H. 



IO 



146 The Sultan's Navy 



the matter of plunder the operations were highly re- 
munerative, one single expedition bringing over half-a- 
million pieces of gold into the exchequer besides other 
booty. The admiral meanwhile enriched himself beyond 
the dreams of avarice but was careful to propitiate his 
royal employer by handsome gifts. " On the morning 
after his arrival," says the Hajji, describing the return 
of the fleet from a season's cruise, " the pasha dressed 
two hundred boys in scarlet, bearing in their hands 
flasks and goblets of gold and silver. Behind them 
followed thirty others, each carrying on his shoulders 
a purse of gold ; after these came two hundred men, 
each carrying a purse of money ; and lastly, two hundred 
infidels wearing collars, each bearing a roll of cloth on 
his back. These he took as a present to the Emperor, 
and having kissed the royal hand, was presented with 
robes of the most splendid kind, and received the highest 
marks of honour; for never at any period had any 
capudan done such signal service." 

On June 8th, 1538, Barbarossa sailed from the Porte 
on the greatest exploit of his life, a desperate struggle 
with the fleets of Spain, Portugal, Genoa, Venice and 
the Papal States, united under the command of Doria. 
The alliance had been formed in a determined attempt 
to free the Mediterranean from the incubus of the red- 
bearded pirate, and the fleets assembled for the purpose 
at Corfu. Khaireddin as soon as he heard of the alliance 
set out to meet the enemy. When he came near Corfu, 
being uncertain of their exact position, he prayed for 
divine guidance and was rewarded by a vision of a great 
shoal of fish rising from the sea in the direction of the 
Gulf of Arta on the Albanian coast. Setting his course 
accordingly he sailed on and when near Prevesa his 



The Battle of Prevesa 



147 



look-out reported the Christian fleet in sight. Barba- 
rossa invoked the aid of Allah, inscribed some verses 
of the Koran on slips of paper which he scattered on 
the waves on either side of his ship, and steered to the 
attack. The action which followed is historic. The 
huge Spanish galleons on which Doria chiefly relied 
fared no better than those which the Duke of Sidonia 
led against Drake fifty years later, and the day ended 
in a complete victory for the Turk. The story of the 
battle is told in the Hajji's pages as follows: 

" The enemy's light vessels came up to the strait 
[of Prevesa] where the arrogant- wretches opened fire 
upon the Moslem vessels. The brave and experienced 
Pasha, unable to bear this insolence, beat his drum and 
cymbals, hoisted his flags and sailed out of the bay to 
meet the fleet of the despicable enemy. 

" The unfortunate infidels, stationing themselves in 
regular lines, now began to discharge their artillery; 
which, however, wanted strength to make it efficient. 
A galleon first came out and opened a heavy fire, but 
was driven back by the fire of the fleet. Khair-ad-din 
succeeded in taking several barges by attacking them 
from a distance, and thus gradually weakening them. 
Andrea Doria and the general having now come up 
with their galleys, were about to commence an attack, 
when the brave Pasha bore down upon them, and com- 
menced a heavy fire, which obliged them to bring round 
their barges. The balls from the barges now fell like 
rain, and the two fleets were so enveloped in smoke, 
that they could not see each other. The enemy's galleys 
several times attempted to take the Moslem vessels in 
the rear, that so they might take up a position between 
them and the other ships and barges. The latter, which, 



10 — 2 



148 The Sultan's Navy 



from their size resembled floating castles, were dashing 
against each other with great violence ; nor was it 
possible to separate them. At length, after nine of the 
barges had been driven back by the strength of the 
Moslem vessels, the pasha of lion-like courage redoubled 
his exertions, and keeping up a brisk fire, sunk several, 
and clearing a way through them, passed on to the 
galleys, strictly prohibiting his men from plundering a 
single barge. The infidels were astonished, and over- 
whelmed with terror at the impetus of the warriors: and 
their galleys being unable any longer to maintain the 
fight, they turned their faces to flight. The slaughter 
continued during the whole of the interval between the 
two hours of prayer and most of the barges were either 
destroyed or sunk by the cannon. Andrea Doria seeing 
this tore his beard, and took to flight, all the smaller 
galleys following him." 

The victory left the Turks with the definite mastery 
of the Mediterranean, a mastery which they retained 
until their still more famous encounter with an allied 
Christian fleet at the battle of Lepanto. 

Four years after the battle of Prevesa, Francis I 
enlisted Suleyman as his ally against the Emperor 
Charles, and Barbarossa sailed to Toulon to join the 
French fleet. The campaign was not particularly note- 
worthy except for this unnatural union between the 
most Christian King and the Caliph of Islam. The 
strangeness of the alliance was accentuated by an incident 
which befell when the two fleets were anchored side by 
side at Nice. When Sunday came the church bells rang 
out across the harbour and reached Barbarossa's ears, 
The hateful sound, identified with the religion of the 
despised Nasarinis, infuriated the devout old pirate 



Captains Courageous 149 



who at once sent a message to say that he would brook 
no other summons to prayer than the Muezzin's call as 
long as Moslems and Moslem ships remained in harbour. 

The sultan of Tunis who had given Khizr and Oruj 
Khaireddin their start in life had long before been de- 
feated and deposed by the Spaniards, who for a number 
of years held Tunis as a Spanish possession. Barbarossa, 
however, had held firm in his own sultanate of Algiers, 
which he governed chiefly by proxy. The emperor now 
in 1 541 made a last desperate effort to oust the corsair 
from his lair. Charles led a fleet in person to Algiers 
with 50,000 men, including 4000 cavalry, on board. 
The fortune which followed Barbarossa through life 
helped him again on this occasion. A fearful storm 
caught Charles's fleet just as it reached the African shore 
and scattered it in all directions. One hunded and six 
of the Spanish ships were driven on shore, fourteen 
hundred Moslem galley-slaves escaped to freedom and 
Charles returned discomfited to Spain. 

Five years later Khaireddin died at the age of eighty, 
the date of his death being incorporated, in the favourite 
Turkish fashion, in a chronogram which runs "mat rats 
ul bakr" ("dead is the lord of the seas"). The Genoese 
hero who had fought him in many waters outlived him 
by fifteen years, dying in 1 56 1 at the yet maturer age 
of ninety-two. 

The period of Barbarossas exploits produced many 
other admirals famous for ever in Turkish history. 
Turgud, ' 'the drawn sword of Islam," a Christian born 
and at one time in his career a slave in Doria's galleys, 
and Piale, the conqueror of Tripoli, rank second only 
to Khaireddin himself. Their names, like his, are 
associated chiefly with the Mediterranean. But there 



150 The Sultan's Navy 



were others who won their fame in more distant waters, 
for Turkish seamen contributed their full share of ad- 
venture in that great age of exploration. Without 
boasting a Columbus or Magellan, Turkey can claim 
many a bold spirit who, sailing unchartered seas, added 
his quota to the world's knowledge of geography and 
navigation. 

The sphere of their adventures lay chiefly in the 
Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, then 
almost unexplored except by a few of the Portuguese 
captains. As early as 1530 Sultan Suleyman sent his 
namesake Khadim Suleyman Pasha to help the King 
of Gujerat against the Portuguese settlers. The expedi- 
tion failed in its object after a month's vain siege of 
the Portuguese stronghold at Div, and in the reaction 
following on their defeat the Turks lost Aden. Another 
admiral, Piri Pasha — famous for his works on the science 
of navigation — recovered Aden some years later and, 
sailing on round the coast of Arabia and taking Muscat 
on his way, anchored with a Turkish fleet at Basra. 
He found it easier, however, to get into the Persian 
Gulf than out again as the Portuguese held the straits of 
Ormuz, and on the return he lost half of his ships and 
his head as well when he reached the capital. For years 
the remnant of his fleet remained shut up in the Gulf 
and many attempts were made to save them. At last 
Sa'idi Ali, a famous astronomer and poet, retrieved his 
country's reputation by defeating the Portuguese near 
Ormuz and freeing a passage for the ships. The experi- 
ences of his fleet while returning through the Arabian 
Sea are graphically described in Hajji Khalifa's history. 

" In the neighbourhood of Zafifer," the writer says, 
4 'they were overtaken by the storm called the Elephant, 



Riding the Whirlpool 151 

before which they scudded, being unable even to carry 
the foresail : Compared with this, a storm in the Medi- 
terranean is as insignificant as a grain of sand: day 
could not be distinguished from night, and the waves 
rose like huge mountains. Their vessels were thus 
greatly injured and they were obliged to throw over- 
board a great part of their ammunition and stores. In 
this way they drifted before the wind for ten days, during 
which time it rained incessantly and there was no ap- 
pearance of daylight. The sailors here saw immense 
fishes, of the length of two galleys ; at which their spirits 
rose, because they consider them animals of good omen. 
They also saw sea-horses, huge serpents, tortoises as 
large as millstones and seaweed. After having been 
detained a long time, they at last approached the bay 
of Chekd. 

" Suddenly the colour of the sea became changed to 
a whitish hue, and the sailors began to cry out. The 
cause of their alarm was what in the Indian Ocean 
was called a whirlpool, a thing very common about 
Gerdefoon on the Ethiopian coast, and in the bay of 
Chekd near Sind. It is stated in maritime works that 
ships getting into one of these must inevitably perish. 
Having sounded and found they had only five fathoms 
of water, they took in their sails. Towards morning the 
wind fell a little and they sent up an able seaman to 
the mast-head, who descried a temple on the land. 
Soon after they passed Kormian, Mangalore, and 
Somnat and came very near Div ; but the latter place 
being in the hands of the infidels, they did not show 
their sail that day, but made the best of their way. 
Again the wind increased, and the helms became quite 
unmanageable; the boatswain's whistle could not be 



152 The Sultan's Navy 



distinguished from the whistling of the wind and no 
one could walk the decks. They were also obliged to 
shut up most of the troops in the holds. In short the 
horrors of this day were comparable only to those of the 
resurrection. At length they reached the coast of 
Guzerat, in India, when the sailors suddenly cried out 
that a hurricane was before them ; upon which they 
dropped anchor ; but the sea was so heavy that the ships 
were nearly upset. The galley slaves broke their chains, 
and all the men stripping themselves naked, began to 
provide themselves with barrels and leather bottles for 
their escape. Some of the anchors however broke and 
thus the vessels escaped the hurricane. This occurred 
at a place between Div and Daman. Towards afternoon 
the weather became somewhat fairer, which enabled 
them to proceed to the port of Daman in the district of 
Guzerat, where they anchored about two miles from the 
shore. For five days the hurricane continued to blow 
with great violence, and was accompanied with incessant 
rains. The vessels had now shipped much water, and 
three of them, losing their anchorage drifted ashore; 
but all on board landed in safety." 

The era of Turkey's greatness at sea was as short 
as it was brilliant. It had reached its climax when 
Pius V in 1 57 1 formed the Maritime League to break 
the Ottoman supremacy in the Mediterranean. Don 
Juan of Austria in command of the massed fleets proved 
more than a match for Muezzin-zadeh Ali, at that time 
Capudan Pasha, and at the battle of Lepanto (in which, 
by the way, the author of Don Quixote fought and had 
his left hand maimed for life by a bullet), the Ottoman 
navy was practically wiped off the sea. 

Turkey escaped, it is true, the full results of the 



Turkey Yields the Trident 153 

disaster thanks to the futile bickerings of the Christian 
allies and had soon built another fleet to replace that 
which was lost, but she never regained her former posi- 
tion. The race of her great admirals was extinct and 
her history records no more triumphs like those of 
Barbarossa. Venice, her old Maritime rival, drew 
rapidly ahead in the struggle and within a century such 
a change had taken place that a squadron of half-a-dozen 
Venetian ships could block the Dardanelles and imprison 
the Turks in their own waters for months on end. 
Delfino and the Morosinis robbed Turkey of the last 
vestiges of her naval prestige, the former on one occa- 
sion attacking and routing a Turkish fleet of thirty- 
four vessels with his own galley and three others. 
Sandys, writing in the first decade of the seventeenth 
century, says that even in his time the Egyptian tribute 
came overland from Cairo as the sea passage was closed 
to the Turks, while Rycaut half a century later disposes 
of Turkish sea power in the following words : 

" The Turks are not likely to be Masters of this 
Seat of Neptune whilst they so unwillingly apply their 
minds to Maritime affairs and make so little use of the 
advantages they have for Shipping. They indeed ac- 
knowledge their inabilities in Sea-affairs and say That 
God hath given the Sea to the Christians, but the Land 
to ms. And no doubt but that the large Possessions and 
Riches they enjoy on the stable Element takes off their 
minds from a deep attention to matters of the Sea, 
which is almost solely managed among them by Rene- 
gadoes who have abandoned their Faith and Country. 
And it is happy for Christendom that this faintness 
remains on the Spirits of the Turks and aversion from 
all Naval employment, whose number and power the 



1 54 The Sultans Navy 



Great God of Hosts hath restrained by the bounds of 
the Ocean as He hath limited the Ocean itself by the 
Sands of the Sea-shore." 

Having looked at the exploits of Turkeys great 
admiral through the eyes of one of his compatriots let 
us now turn to a similar scene described by the pen of 
a Christian writer. In 1560 a Christian alliance was 
formed for the purpose of ousting the Turks from the 
island of Jerba one of their main strongholds on the 
North African coast. Doria himself led the fleet, which 
counted 200 sail, with Don Alvarez de Sande, Duke of 
Medina, in command of the troops. Their first attack 
was successful and they established a garrison on the 
island. As soon as the news of this reached Suleyman 
he sent Piale with the Turkish fleet to repel the intruders. 
A hard fought battle ended in the total defeat of Doria 
and the garrison remained stranded on the island. The 
brave little force withstood a siege of several months, 
but, decimated by famine and disease, was finally forced 
to capitulate in the early autumn. 

Busbequius, the imperial ambassador whose diary 
fills some of the early pages of this book, was in resi- 
dence at Constantinople when the victorious Turkish 
fleet returned to the Golden Horn and he describes the 
scene as follows : 

" In the month of September the victorious Navy 
of the Turks returned to Constantinople, bringing the 
Christian Captives with their Gallies along with them. 
A joyful Spectacle for the Turks, but a sad one for the 
Christians that live among them ! That night it lay at 
Anchor over against Byzantium, that so they might enter 
the Port the next Day in greater Pomp and Splendour. 
Solyman came down into an Apartment in his Gardens 



A Pitiable Spectacle 



155 



near the Sea-side, that from thence he might see the 
Prisoners ent'ring in. Don Alvarez de Sande was in 
the Stern of his Admiral's Galley and with him Don 
Sancho de Leyva and Don Bellinger de Requesne, one 
the Commander of the Sicilian Galleys, the other of the 
Neapolitan. The Galleys of the Christians were de- 
spoiFd of their Ornaments, Streamers etc., and hall'd in 
Barques (sic) that they might appear little and con- 
temptible in the sight of the Turks. They who observed 
Solyman's Countenance at that time say that they per- 
ceived no sign of insolent Mirth therein, nor, when I 
saw him go to his Devotion the next Day, was his Face 
altered from its usual Hue, as if that Victory had not 
concerned him at all, so well was this cunning old man 
able to bear the Breath of his smiling Fortune. The 
Prisoners were afterwards brought into the Seraglio, 
but so miserably Hunger-starv'd that some could hardly 
stand on their Legs ; others fell down in a Swoon from 
very Feebleness, others had Arms put upon them in a 
Jeer, in which Posture they died. The Turks insulted 
over them on every hand, promising to themselves the 
Empire of the whole World ; 'for who shall now be able 
to stand before us (they said) since we have overcome 
the Spaniards?' " 

The pitiful tale of the prisoners' subsequent fate as 
told in Busbequius's narrative has already been quoted 
in Chapter VII. 

Though Blunt had no doubt good reason for his 
remarks as to the relative immunity from capture by 
the Turks enjoyed by the English • 'slugs," one has only 
to look in the pages of Hakluyt to see what a hazardous 
adventure a voyage in the Mediterranean was for an 
English ship in the sixteenth century, and I can find no 



156 The Sultan's Navy 



more fitting end for this chapter than an account by a 
British sea-captain of a fight with Turkish galleys which 
ended in the capture of ship and crew. 

"'The three halfe moonesl manned with 38 men and 
well fensed with munitions, set from Portsmouth, 1563. 
Falling neere the Streights they perceived themselves 
to be beset around with eight gallies of the Turkes in 
such wise that there was no way for them to flie or es- 
cape away, but that they must either yeeld or els be 
sunke. Which the owner perceiving, manfully en- 
couraged his company, exhorting them valiantly to shew 
their manhood, shewing them that God was their God 
and requesting them not to faint in seeing such a heape 
of their enemies ready to devour them, putting them in 
mind of the old and ancient woorthiness of their countrey- 
men who in the hardest extremities have alwayes most 
prevailed and gone away conquerors, yea and where it 
hath bene almost impossible. 

" With other like encouragements, exhorting them 
to behave themselves manfully, they fell all on their 
knees making their prayers briefly unto God : who being 
all risen up again perceived their enemies by their signes 
and defiances bent to the spoyle, whereupon every man 
tooke him to his weapon. 

" Then stood up one Grove, the master, being a 
comely man with his sword and target, holding them up 
in defiance against his enemies. So likewise stood up 
the Owner, the Master's mate, Boateswaine, Purser and 
every man well appointed. Nowe likewise sounded up 
the drums, trumpets and flutes which w d have en- 
couraged any man had he never so little heart in him. 

"Then taketh him to his charge John Foxe, the 
gunner, in the disposing of his pieces and sent his bullets 



The Fight of ' The three halfe moones' 157 

towards the Turkes, who likewise bestowed their pieces 
thrice as fast towards the Christians. But shortly they 
drew neere so that the bowsmen fell to their charge in 
sending forth their arrowes so thicke among the Gallies 
and also in doubling their shot so sore upon them that 
there were twice as many of the Turkes slaine as the 
number of the Christians. But the Turkes discharged 
so fast and so long that the ship was very sore stricken 
and bruised under water. Which the Turkes perceiving, 
made the more haste to come aboord the Shippe; which 
ere they could doe, many a Turke bought it deerly with 
the losse of their lives. Yet all was in vaine and boorded 
they were, where they found so hot a skirmish that it 
had bene better they had not meddled with the feast. 
For the Englishmen shewed themselves men in deed, 
in working manfully with their bills and halbardes; 
where the Owner, master, boateswaine and their company 
stoode to it so lustily that the Turkes were halfe dis- 
maied. But the Boateswaine shewed himselfe valiant 
above the rest, for he fared amongst the Turkes like a 
wood Lion and there was none of them that either c d 
or durst, stand in his face, till at the last there came a 
shot from the Turkes which brake his whistle asunder 
and smote him on the brest so that he fell downe, bidding 
them farewell and to be of good comfort encouraging 
them likewise to winne praise by death rather than to 
live captives in misery and shame. Which they hearing, 
indeed intended to have done, but the press and store 
of the Turkes was so great that they were not able long 
to endure but were so overpressed that they c d not 
wield their weapons, by reason whereof they must needs 
be taken. Which none of them intended to have bene 
but rather to have died, except onely the masters mate 



158 The Sultan s Navy 



who shrunke from the skirmish like a notable coward, 
esteeming neither the value of his name nor accounting 
the example of his fellowes or the miseries whereunto 
he should be put. 

"But, in fine, so it was that the Turkes were victors. 
Then w d it have grieved any hard heart to see those 
Infidels so violently entreating the Christians not having 
any respect of their manhood which they had tasted of. 
But no remorse or any thing els doth bridle their fierce 
dealing so that the Christians must needs to the Gallies 
to serve their new masters. And they were no sooner 
in them but their Garments were pulled over their eares 
and torne from their backes and they were set to the 
oares." 

The sequel to this unhappy incident as told by 
John Foxe, the gunner, is of so dramatic a nature that, 
although it has no particular connection with the subject 
of this chapter, I cannot refrain from repeating the story 
in a few words. Fourteen years after the loss of " The 
three halfe moones " Foxe and such of his companions 
as had not in the meantime either died of hardship or 
been ransomed by their friends in England found them- 
selves shut up for the winter in Alexandria. Most of 
them were languishing in the prison, which contained 
in all 266 Christian slaves of all nationalities, but Foxe, 
who had gained a reputation as a barber, and half- 
a-dozen others were allowed to ply their trades outside 
the prison walls. Foxe had never given up the hope of 
escape and, finding at last a willing confederate in the 
person of a Spaniard, captured 30 years before and now 
the privileged keeper of a " victualling house," evolved 
a plot for rescuing himself and the whole body of 
prisoners. With his friend's help he secured a number 



A Marvellous Escape 159 



of files which he smuggled into the jail and distributed 
to the prisoners warning them to be ready for escape 
on a certain night. When the time came he repaired to 
the Spaniard's tavern with the other ticket-of-leave men 
accompanied by their Turkish guard. The Spaniard, 
acting on a pre-arranged plan, enveigled the guard 
away while the others sacked the premises for whatever 
instruments they could turn to use as weapons. Foxe 
himself "tooke to him an olde rustie sword blade with- 
out either hilt or pomell, which he made to serve his 
turne by bending the hand-ende instead of a pomell," 
while the others armed themselves "with such spits and 
glaives as they found in the house." 

Shortly after the guard returned and as soon as he 
entered the house realized the situation ; whereupon 
turning to our hero he said — presumably in the ver- 
nacular — " O Foxe, what have I deserved of thee that 
thou shouldst seeke my deathe?" "Thou vilain," Foxe 
replied, " thou hast been a bloodsucker of many a 
Christian's blood, and now shaltst know what thou hast 
deserved." "Wherewith," the tale continues, "he lift 
up his bright shining sword of tenne yeares rust and 
stroke him so maine a blow as that his head clave 
asunder and he fell starke dead to the ground." 

The guard having been thus satisfactorily disposed 
of, the plotters started for the prison and having dis- 
patched six of the warders whom they found in the 
jailor's lodge, secured the keys and exchanging their 
improvised weapons for proper knives and swords, 
broke into the prison where they found the prisoners 
free of their shackles thanks to the imported files. 
Hastily barricading the landward gates (the prison 
stood on the harbour edge), they slipped out by a water- 



160 The Sultans Navy 

gate and took possession of a fast Turkish galley lying 
just outside. 

By this time the whole town was in an uproar, and 
the Turks, rushing to the forts which commanded the 
harbour's entrance, trained their guns on the galley as 
she headed for the sea. 

"Now is the gaily on flote : now have the Castles 
full power upon it : now is there no remedy but to sinke. 
The canons let flie from both sides. What man can 
devise to save it? There is no man but would thinke it 
must needes be sunke. Yet there was not one that feared 
the shotte which went thundring about their eares, not 
yet were once scarred nor touched with five and forty 
shot which came from the castles. Here did God hold 
foorth his buckler and shieldeth the gaily, for they saile 
away, being not once touched with the glaunce of a shot 
and are quickly out of the Turke's reach." 

It is comforting to know that when Foxe, after this 
wonderful exploit, returned safely to his native land he 
was invited to tell his story to the Council, " who con- 
sidering of the state of this man in that hee had spent 
and lost a great part of his youth in thraldome and 
bondage, extended to him their liberalitie to helpe and 
maintaine him in age to their right honour and to the 
encouragement of all true hearted Christians." 



CHAPTER XII 



A DRAGOMAN'S DIARY 

The chapter entitled " An Audience" has already in- 
troduced the reader to Dr Antonio Benetti, dragoman 1 
to the Venetian Embassy at Constantinople. 

The three years which Dr Antonio spent on his 
mission to the Turkish capital were particularly stirring 
ones coinciding as they did with the second siege of 
Vienna, and the story of the immense preparations for 
the campaign and its disastrous sequel fills a great part 
of his diary 2 , interwoven with a wealth of humbler in- 
cident. He begins with the appointment of the new 
ambassador to the Porte in the year 1680. With the 
exception of Genoa, Venice was the first European State 
to maintain a regular embassy at Constantinople and 
on account of her leading position in the Levant trade 
there was always a vast amount of diplomatic business 
to be settled between the two Governments. The selec- 
tion of a new bailo was therefore an important affair of 
state, especially on this occasion when full diplomatic 
relations were to be resumed for the first time since 
peace had been declared after the twenty years' war 
ending in the Turkish conquest of Candia. Such were 
the conditions when the Senate invited applications for 
the post of bailo. The successful candidate was a certain 

1 Every Embassy at Constantinople has — or had — a Turkish speaking 
"dragoman," who conducted all verbal conversations with the Turkish 
Ministers besides acting as an expert adviser on Turkish affairs. The 
word " dragoman " is a corruption of the Turkish word terguman, meaning 
interpreter. 2 Viaggi a Constantinofioli printed at Venice in 1687. 

H. II 



1 62 A Dragoman's Diary 



Senator Donado, who was singled out " for his nobility 
of birth, loftiness of mind, firmness of character and 
opulent wealth." Donado at once set to work to collect 
a staff including secretaries, professors of medicine and 
surgery respectively, dragomans (of whom Benetti was 
one) and a spiritual adviser. Meanwhile the Turkish 
Government were asked to send an escort to conduct 
the new representative through Turkish territory to his 
post. The escort, accompanied by a dragoman of the 
Porte, duly arrived at the end of October, but Donado 
considering the season too advanced for so long a 
journey, postponed his departure till the following year. 

When the mild spring weather came preparations 
were made for the start and a frigate named the " Dove," 
equipped with all manner of provisions, lay anchored 
off the Lido ready to transport the party to Spalato 
which was then the usual starting place for overland 
travellers to Constantinople. The Pope sent an autograph 
letter wishing Donado God-speed, the Doge and his 
brother-senators gave him a formal farewell and after 
taking leave of his numerous friends the ambassador- 
designate was fetched from his palace in a decorated 
barge flying the standard of Saint Mark and, accom- 
panied down the Grand Canal by a countless fleet of 
gondolas, was rowed in state aboard his ship. The 
" Dove " weighed anchor the following day and after 
coasting safely down the Dalmatian shore, landed her 
passengers at Spalato. 

Having solemnly received the Holy Sacrament for 
the last time before leaving Christian soil, the little band 
set out on their journey through the Balkans. They 
were protected by a squadron of Turkish horse and 
lodged on the road at the common khans, where the 



A Problem in Astrology 163 



proud Venetian Senator kept up a dignified exclusiveness 
by living behind a shelter of canvas screens. 

The chief incident of the journey occurred near Bel- 
grade where they came upon a wounded fellow country- 
man who had been robbed and stripped by brigands 
and left half-dead on the road. The rescued man proved 
to be a Roman by birth who at the tender age of ten 
had been captured by the Turks together with his uncle, 
a Knight of Malta. The knight had died in the Galleys, 
but the boy was made to renounce his faith and be- 
came the slave of a Turkish agha. He regained his 
freedom on his master's death and at once renouncing 
Islam had started off for his native land, only to fall 
into the brigands' hands en route. The unlucky man 
was treated by the embassy surgeon and being restored 
to health was admitted a member of the suite. 

Two months after leaving the Adriatic, Donado and 
his party reached their destination and entering Stambul 
by the Ayoub Gate, crossed the Golden Horn and took 
up their quarters in the ancient bailaggio. A striking 
phenomenon which occurred at the moment of their 
arrival fills several pages of the diary. An enormous 
comet stretching across more than a quarter of the firma- 
ment appeared in the Northern sky and evoked the 
wildest speculations among the superstitious inhabitants. 
Each of the many races living within the walls of Stambul 
had its own astrologers and these had each his own 
interpretations of the celestial portent. Benetti was 
somewhat entertained by the divergence of their views. 
The Turks — who may have already scented the coming 
turn of events — declared that the comet sweeping from 
East to West foretold the onward march of Turkish 
conquest in Europe. The Jews, true to their racial 



11 — 2 



164 A Dragoman s Diary 



trait, gave it a religious significance and discerned in 
it a sign of the Messiah's coming birth ; the Persian 
colony augured a revival of their country's power and 
the recovery of Bagdad ; while the opportunist Greeks 
loudly proclaimed it a token from heaven against the 
Roman church and a solemn warning from God to the 
Pope to renounce his heresy and make submission to 
the Patriarch. 

Shortly after his arrival, the new bailo 1 ' took over" 
from his predecessor, who left for Venice after having, 
as a noble parting act, ransomed a dozen Christian slaves 
from the bagno to take home in his ship. The succeeding 
year passed with little of interest for the diarist to note. 
In the following August ( 1 682) the ambassador presented 
his credentials amid the scenes described already in the 
previous chapter, and he gained meanwhile a firm foot- 
hold by winning the gratitude and friendship of Mushib 
Pasha, Mohammed's favourite son-in-law, who was cured 
of a ten years' lameness by Dr Tilli, the Pisan surgeon 
attached to the embassy. 

In the same month as the audience an event took 
place which put all the foreign embassies in the greatest 
flutter. The horse-tails were set up in the courtyard of 
the Palace. This was the call to arms and, like the fiery 
cross in old Scottish days, the signal spread rapidly 
through the length and breadth of the land, so that 
within a week or two every pasha from Epirus to the 
Persian Gulf had received the news and planted his 
own horse-tail as a rallying point for the troops of his 
province. 

But with all this open preparation for war the enemy 
was yet to seek. No breach had occurred with any 
Christian State and Donado and his fellow diplomats 




VleuiAnders lupunts* 




TURKISH WRESTLING 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations f aides en la Tttrquie, 1577 



1 



Turkish Sports 



165 



were kept on tenterhooks not knowing on which of their 
countries the blow was to fall. All their attempts to 
probe the Sultan's secret were in vain and they could 
only report home that every night thousands of troops 
and masses of supplies and ammunition were passed 
across the Bosphorus, but what their destination was 
no one could tell. 

This condition of affairs lasted for several months, 
during which time the Sultan hid his intentions, what- 
ever they were, under a veil of forced frivolity. First 
a great regatta was held in front of one of his waterside 
palaces on the Bosphorus, Mohammed himself looking 
on from a balcony while the embassy party boarded 
one of their own merchantmen, which was moored near 
the spot. A suspicious ruse attempted on this occasion 
increased the Venetian's apprehensions. A message 
arrived from the Sultan asking that the captain of the 
ship should favour the Turks with an exhibition of naval 
drill and Venetian fighting tactics. The trick was a little 
too obvious and the wily ambassador had an answer 
returned that his countrymen never fought in narrow 
waters and the Bosphorus was not wide enough to give 
scope for their regular manoeuvres. 

There were also games, wrestling and jerid 
throwing on the At Maidan, the Hippodrome of old 
Byzantine days. The last was a Turkish form of tilting 
and the favourite sport of the palace pages. Benetti 
describes how the players divided into two " sides" of 
twenty or thirty each and drew up facing each other 
across the maidan. Then a champion from one of the 
ranks would ride out, poising his jerid (a short 
wooden staff), dash across the space and turning sharply 
in front of the opposite line hurl his weapon at the head 



1 66 A Dragoman's Diary 



of one of his opponents. The latter was either knocked 
off his horse, or, if he successfully dodged the blow, 
rode out in turn and chased his assailant trying to 
unhorse him. While the pursuit continued, two more 
players would issue from the original line and attack in 
the same fashion, followed by a team of three and so 
forth till both sides were locked in a general m£Ue. No 
protection was worn and the jerids being of stout 
dimensions there were broken heads galore ; in fact it 
was no uncommon thing, as we learn from other writers, 
for a player to be knocked dead on the spot. 

A much more placid form of entertainment was pro- 
vided by a friendly pasha who invited Donado and his 
dragoman out to his country seat at Ayoub, a pretty 
village on the Sweet Waters of Europe. They found 
a meal spread in an Italian Garden built in terraces 
up a hill side with a beautiful view down the Golden 
Horn. Magnificent tulips — some, Benetti assures us, 
growing three or four on a stem — anemones of every 
colour imported from Crete and many other flowers 
filled the beds, while in a delicate loggia near the water 
they were shown a peculiar floral confection (borrowed, 
one suspects, from the Persians) which consisted of a 
pyramid constructed in tiers on each of which stood a 
row of vases of flowers arranged in different colours 
with a specially selected blossom placed on the apex to 
crown the whole. They dined al fresco on all manner 
of luxuries including even the forbidden liquor, though 
Benetti is careful to mention their host's request that 
they should not spill a drop of wine for fear of polluting 
his garden. 

During this time of suspense the great hajj started 
for Mecca and Dr Antonio crossed over to Scutari to 



Speeding the Pilgrims 



see the pilgrims start. For some days previously the 
' ' holy carpet," which the Caliph sends yearly to be 
spread on the Kaaba, had been lying in state in its 
carved wooden box in the mosque at Beshiktash. When 
the day arrived it was closed, sealed with the imperial 
cypher and loaded on the sacred camel which was to 
carry it over its 1 500 mile journey. The imam who 
led the camel and was destined never to leave its side 
till Mecca was reached ferried his charge across the 
Bosphorus to the place of assembly. As they passed 
through the streets the people hung garlands round the 
beast's neck and strewed flowers in its path wishing it 
luck for the journey. The Hajjis, flocking from the 
khans where they had been lodging, collected at the 
appointed spot and formed up to take the road. In front 
of the carpet marched a military band and a mob of 
yelling dervishes, together with the " pasha of the pil- 
grimage " with royal letters to all and sundry to help 
the pilgrims on their way ; behind came the pilgrims 
themselves old and young, rich and poor, some on horses, 
most on foot and a few infirm old men in carts, even 
little children unable to walk riding on their fathers' 
shoulders. I n accordance with the kindly eastern custom 
a multitude of friends and relatives accompanied the 
pilgrims to their first night's halting place to speed them 
on their way, returning on the morrow to the capital. 

While the gathering of the army on the shore of 
Marmora near Silivri was proceeding apace, Mohammed 
started yet another diversion to distract attention. He 
is known to history as Mohammed Avji — Mohammed 
the Hunter — and on this occasion he lived up to his 
name by organizing a game drive on a quite unparalleled 
scale. The scene of the drive was the forest of Belgrade 



1 68 A Dragoman's Diary 



which lies close behind Constantinople. Thirty thousand 
men were impressed to round up the game in an enor- 
mous circle at the centre of which kiosks were erected 
for Mohammed and his favourite wife. The work of 
narrowing the circle lasted for fifteen days during which 
time several hundreds of the wretched beaters, who 
were flogged mercilessly into the thickets and jungles, 
died of hunger and exhaustion, and this was in spite of 
the fact that a special tax had been levied throughout 
the European vilayets to provide funds for the occasion, 
the yield of the tax having as usual remained in the 
pockets of the palace officials. The " bag " from this 
monstrous drive was frankly pitiable — a leopard, six 
ibex and a few dozen hares. The total kill included, 
in fact, many more human beings than beasts. 

At last by May 1683 the army was ready to march 
and, further concealment being useless, the Sultan, egged 
on as always by Black Mustafa, arranged for a specta- 
cular show to popularize the campaign. The camp at 
Silivri contained by now many thousands of men, re- 
presenting the levies from Asiatic Turkey including 
Mesopotamia. On one flank was the Sultan's private 
camp, a vast enclosure more than a quarter of a mile in 
circumference shut in by screens and containing within 
it an enormous tent in three compartments, one of which 
served as a throne room, as well as a hall of justice, 
domed Turkish baths with fountains laid on and a 
hundred other extravagances. The Grand Vizir was 
camped near by in almost equal luxury and the army 
itself occupied a large well-watered valley, where the 
countless variegated tents of red, green, white and 
orange presented a wonderful sight. 

The favourite Sultana travelled out to see the 



A Royal Progress 169 

spectacle and Benetti was fortunate enough to see her 
start from her palace on the Bosphorus. Little could, 
it is true, be seen of the lady herself as she was shielded 
from the public gaze by a double line of black eunuchs 
holding hangings of green silk above the level of her 
head. The same eunuchs formed a human curtain round 
her as she sat in her caique, which the Bostanji Bashi 
steered standing with averted face in the stern. Crowds 
of bostanjis lined the banks as the caique passed on its 
way to Stambul and according to custom handfuls of 
silver were thrown to them whenever the boat came 
near the shore. From Stambul the Sultana drove out 
to visit the camp in a cart drawn by four horses harnessed 
abreast and with all the usual iron work replaced by 
silver. 

Finally Mohammed himself made a royal progress 
to the camp. The scene must have been one of the 
most magnificent that even Constantinople, that city of 
splendours, had ever seen. I cannot do better than give 
the picture just as Benetti describes it. 

At the head of the procession went the Prophet's 
green standard borne by an emir with a dervish by his 
side shouting " huwa, huwa " {i.e. "He! He!" a 
periphrase for God) ; more dervishes in hair coats, 
preachers of the jehad, followed him. Then came the 
Stambul Effendi and the two Cadiaskers (the highest 
judicial officers) wearing turbans of such a size that a 
man's arms could hardly embrace them. Then the Grand 
Mufti (the Primate of Islam) in plain white. Then some 
ichoghlans leading wolf-hounds in gold-embroidered 
coats and red spiked collars, and four horsemen carrying 
hunting leopards on their saddles. Two plumed camels 
came next, one carrying the Koran in a green case, the 



170 A Dragomans Diary 



other a piece of cloth from the Prophet's tomb wrapt 
in a gold cover. After these a chorbaji with 100 janis- 
saries marching by twos and carrying their cauldrons, 
who had with them their cooks in black leather aprons 
and their sakkas, or water carriers, riding on belaurelled 
horses. Next 100 saimens f the Sultan's archer body- 
guard, in their peculiar helmets of beaten gold, followed 
by dellis in tiger and panther skins, and detach- 
ments of Bosnians and Tartars. Next an important 
Pasha with a white martingale on his horse made of 
plaited hairs from the tail of the Prophet's own 
steed. 

Next 150 pikemen (a late introduction into the 
Turkish army) in mail with green and yellow cloaks 
worn plaidwise over their shoulders, their horses also in 
armour, with metal plates on flanks, shoulders and rump, 
and gay with fringed velvet saddle-cloths, bridles a- 
jingle with little gold plaques, and twisted coloured reins. 
Then four silk banners with an escort of 80 aghas. Then 
a dozen chaoushes carrying black staves hung about 
with little silver chains. Then the massed "tails" of 
the Sultan himself, the Grand Vizir and the principal 
pashas ; white horse-tails these were, mounted on red 
poles with silver balls on the top. Next came the Grand 
Vizir preceded by a band of horsemen with kettle drums, 
pipers, cymbal-players and trumpeters (military bands, 
one may observe, are said to have originated with the 
Turks). He was followed by a group of the palace 
pages resplendent in shining mail with caps plastered 
with gold disks and twined around with green and red 
silks. 

Immediately behind them rode Mohammed in person, 
a dazzling figure in a white " toga" with gold-embroidered 




AN OFFICER OF JANISSARIES 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations f aides en la Turquie, 1577 



The Sultans Secret 



171 



flowers and frogs composed of brilliants ; a fur-lined 
hood hung on his back and he wore on his head the 
narrow turban with a diamond spray which was part 
of the imperial insignia. The man himself was a sad 
contrast to his magnificent trappings as he rode along 
with bent shoulders, his peaked nose, thin beard, 
scraggy neck and undistinguished features relieved only 
by the fine black eyes which were the heirloom of the 
imperial house. The Shahzadeh (the Crown Prince), a 
fine young man of 18, rode behind his father, and after 
him came more pages including the silihdar with the 
sultan's sword and the turban-valet with two of the royal 
turbans. Six coachfuls of sultanas came next, the first of 
them, containing the favourite wife, drawn by eight white 
ponies, the others by six. The vehicles were covered with 
rounded hoods painted in arabesques and curtained in red 
and green. Other ladies of the harem followed in horse- 
litters and a score of buffalo carts carried members of 
their households. A regiment of spahis and the royal 
corps of tent-pitchers with twenty camels loaded with 
carpets and other furniture of the camp brought up the 
rear. 

In and out of the procession as it passed along ran 
a number of excited dervishes, naked except for their 
little green aprons fringed with beads of ebony, but 
wearing the towering Persian hat of brown camel's hair 
peculiar to their order. Their business was to stir up 
the troops to a religious ferment, which they did with 
fanatical cries and deafening blasts on cow-horns. 

When the Sultan had joined the troops at Silivri 
the nervous apprehensions of the foreign ambassadors 
were tenfold increased. It was clear that an attack on an 
unprecedented scale was on the point of being launched 



172 



A Dragomans Diary 



against some Christian Power, for besides the army 
encamped near the capital such enormous numbers of 
spahis had crossed the Bosphorus and marched on to- 
wards Adrianople that it was clear that every pasha, 
sanjak and bey in Asia had obeyed the summons. At 
the same time naval preparations were going ahead, 
all the old galleys being overhauled and many new ones 
built. Each representative used his powers of diplomatic 
persuasion to head off the Turk from his own country 
and encourage an attack on his neighbour, and the 
prospect looked black for the case of Venice when news 
arrived of a deplorable fracas at Zara where a number 
of Dalmatians had risen against their Turkish masters, 
killed the sanjak s brother, massacred some hundreds 
of Turks and pillaged and burnt the aghas homesteads. 
On hearing this dire report Donado at once asked for 
another audience, but the Sultan being now in his camp 
refused to see any foreign envoy on the typical pretext 
that his dignity would be sullied by sitting on the tent 
floor on the same level as a Christian. At this point, 
however, the friendship of Mushib stood the ambassador 
in good stead. Through his agency he managed to 
induce the Mufti to issue a fetva to the effect that the 
Zara outrage was not a casus belli A week later the 
secret was out. Vienna w T as the Turkish objective and 
the troops were to march at once. The German and 
Polish ambassadors received instructions to accompany 
the army; the " subject "envoys of Ragusa, Transylvania, 
Moldavia and Wallachia had to go too ; the French, 
British and Venetian representatives determined to 
remain at the capital. 

The day before the start a terrific storm swept across 
Constantinople and wrought dire confusion in the camp. 



A n Ill-omened Start 1 73 



All the tents were levelled and the streams coming down 
in spate flooded the valley, drowned men and beasts, 
ruined a large part of the stores and reduced the Sultan's 
sumptuous quarters to a pulp. This in itself was a bad 
enough omen, but what really devastated the minds of 
the Turks was the seemingly trivial occurrence of the 
Sultan's turban being blown off his head by a gust of 
wind. From this moment popular confidence in the suc- 
cess of the war was badly shaken and Black Mustafa, 
who was known for its real author, became the object 
of the people's hate. 

The ambitious Vizir, could not, however, be daunted 
by an accident of nature and he persuaded the Sultan 
to lead out the army as soon as the damage was repaired. 
Though the streams were still almost impassable and a 
special carriage with 6-foot wheels drawn by twelve 
horses had to be made to transport the Sultan across 
country, on April 7th, 1682 the troops marched out, 
the Janissaries defiling according to custom in front of 
their agha and presenting him with baskets of fruit and 
flowers as they passed. 

With the Turkish army went Mushib Pasha accom- 
panied by Dr Tilli, the embassy surgeon, whose letters 
written to Benetti en route and reproduced in the latter's 
diary tell of some of the features of the great march. 
The rains which had made such havoc of the Silivri 
camp continued to fall and so sodden was the country that 
the troops, spreading out to avoid the trodden ground, 
churned a track four miles wide across the plains. On 
reaching Belgrade the Sultan handed over command 
to the Grand Vizir consigning the Prophet's standard 
to him in the presence of the troops. He took up his 
own residence in the town and settled down with his 



174 ^ Dragomans Diary 



wives and household to pursue his usual life of pleasure. 
Hunts were held in the surrounding country and a fleet 
of caiques on the Bosphorus model was built to carry 
the royal party for pleasure trips on the Danube. One 
of the fetes organized to amuse the Sultan included a 
sort of Lord Mayor's procession, and Dr Tilli specially 
mentions a freakish and rather gruesome item invented 
by a Persian servant of one of the pashas. A cart 
paraded through the streets bearing what to all appear- 
ance was the dismembered trunk of a man with his head 
severed and lying apart from the body. Although 
seemingly decapitated and wallowing in gore, the body 
breathed and occasionally moved its position to the 
intense stupefaction of the on-lookers. The surgeon's 
scientific curiosity was naturally aroused by such an 
incredible phenomenon and he tracked the mystery 
to its source, only to find that this early exponent of 
Mr Maskelyn's art had concocted the scene with the 
help of five separate men protruding different parts of 
their anatomy from under a black cloth and a liberal 
splashing of red paint ! 

The army meanwhile began to suffer from the 
inevitable defects of its enormous size, and the com- 
missariat threatened to break down, the lack of bread 
becoming so severe that the janissaries actually raided 
the Grand Vizir's own bakery. Many of the guns more- 
over became bogged through the persistent bad weather 
and the spirits of the troops were badly damped by the 
news that Poland was preparing to join forces with their 
old enemy Austria to repel the Turks. 

At Constantinople, however, enthusiasm ran high 
and on the day that news arrived of the crossing of the 
Raab the deputy Mufti ordered a day of prayer and 



Joy Turned to Mourning 175 



thanksgiving. The morning service in the mosques was 
attended by the children from every school in the capital 
and after it was over the congregations formed up out- 
side in columns of two each led by an imam. The pro- 
cessions marching, from the various mosques met on the 
At Maidan where temporary pulpits had been erected 
beforehand. Here the whole immense assembly prayed 
towards Mecca and were afterwards addressed by a 
number of preachers who enjoined prayer and fasting, 
abstention from all vices and constant warfare on behalf 
of Islam, urging the hearers to risk martyrdom for the 
sake of the faith and to fight for pure religion and not 
for worldly profit. Having listened to these admirable 
sentiments from the lips of the hojas, the crowd de- 
parted in profound silence broken only by the chanting 
of suras from the Koran. The populace were not con- 
tent, however, with these religious performances, but 
vented their exuberance in an outburst of jollification 
which bore a singular resemblance to our modern 
celebrations ; the whole town was illuminated, fireworks 
were discharged in the open spaces, guns fired from the 
Topkhaneh and effigies of Christian princes, bishops, 
cardinals and the Pope himself were carried about the 
streets and then burnt. 

In the midst of these celebrations the report came 
of the death of the Sultan- Valida (the Turkish Queen 
Mother) which had taken place at Adrianople. Mes- 
sengers were sent out at once to spread the news through 
the empire and special envoys were sent with alms to 
Mecca. The body had been partially embalmed and 
placed in a wooden coffin packed with ice which was 
loaded on a cart and brought at the trot (an unusual pace 
for these cumbersome Turkish vehicles) to the capital, 



1 76 A Dragoman's Diary 



followed by a string of carriages full of the deceased 
lady's servants. At the city gate the cart was met by 
such of the Ministers of State as had remained behind 
when the army left and the coffin, draped with coloured 
silks and tissue of gold, was carried on their shoulders 
through the town followed by a great multitude of 
mourners including a host of indigent females who 
had lived on the charitable Sultana's bounty. The pro- 
cession went at the rapid pace customary at Eastern 
funerals till they reached the mosque which the Sultan- 
Valida had built in her life-time to accommodate her 
remains, and there was left in the little domed chamber 
made for it, the imam of the mosque having first spread 
it with a green embroidered cloth and placed a turban 
at its head. 

It was not long before the blow fell which was to 
turn Constantinople from joy to mourning. For some 
weeks after the investment of Vienna had begun there 
was a complete stoppage of news from the front. One 
day a solitary spahi arrived breathless with the news 
that Vienna had fallen and a fresh outburst of jubilation 
took place, while the carrier of the good tidings was 
feted by everyone and loaded with presents. Next day 
the spahi had disappeared and the people of Stambul 
realized that they had been duped. A few days later it 
was known that the Grand Vizir's army, after taking 
the outer forts and all but breaking the Christian line, 
had been fallen upon unexpectedly by Sobiesky and 
had fled in disorder. Presently the fugitives began to 
arrive. They had poured back through the Balkans in 
utter confusion committing horrible atrocities on the 
way, murdering the Christian rayahs and burning their 
houses to warm themselves at night. When the Asiatic 



The Sultans Home-Coming 177 



soldiery reached the shore of the Bosphorus the Bostanji 
Bashi, who had charge of the small craft, tried to prevent 
their crossing, but the threat to the capital itself became 
so great that it was decided to let them go over. 

The Sultan meanwhile had left Belgrade upholding 
the tradition of his house by refusing to admit the 
slightest recognition of defeat. He marched out of the 
town with a double band playing before him, having 
continued his huntings and junketings to the last. One 
symptom of his true feelings he gave, namely to order 
a St Bartholomew's massacre of all the Christians at 
Constantinople and that the foreign envoys in particular 
should be sliced into small pieces. Fortunately for 
Donado and his colleagues the Grand Mufti dissuaded 
Mohammed from carrying out this drastic measure, 
pointing out that it was no moment for adding to the 
number of Turkey's enemies abroad. 

Before leaving Constantinople Donado successfully 
fulfilled his mission by getting the Sultan's signature 
to a new treaty of amity and commerce with the Serene 
Republic. He had asked the Senate to relieve him of 
his post after the severe strain of the last two years 
and a successor having been appointed, he made his 
arrangements to return to Venice. The route he had 
come by was now impossible as the whole of the country 
was seething with rapine and anarchy owing to the flood 
of deserters from the army, so he again had recourse 
to the goodwill of Mushib who provided the party with 
a vessel to take them home by sea. A Turkish admiral 
who was just then sailing for Candia was ordered to 
take the Venetians' ship under his charge as far as Crete 
as there was grave danger from corsairs. One little 
contretemps occurred before they were clear of the 



H. 



I 2 



1 78 A Dragoman's Diary 



Bosphorus, the current having driven the ship ashore 
where the bows made havoc of the stucco facade of a 
pasha's palace. The incident, though slight, seemed 
likely to have serious consequences in the then irritated 
state of public feeling, but harm was happily averted by 
the renewed good offices of the Sultan's son-in-law. 

When Constantinople had at length been left behind 
and the two ships had passed the Dardanelles, Donado's 
first care was to give the slip to his escort, reckoning 
that a revengeful Turkish admiral might well be a worse 
danger than any corsair to a defenceless shipload of 
Christians. He therefore stole away at night and navi- 
gating the ship himself brought her safely to Suda Bay, 
one of the three diminutive possessions which his country- 
men still maintained in Crete. After a cordial reception 
by the Proveditore and the small Venetian garrison and 
a stay of several days which the enterprising senator 
devoted to spying out the Turkish defences of Canea, 
the party put to sea again and, joining forces with the 
great Morosini who had been cruising in the neighbour- 
ing waters, arrived safely home again in the first week 
of June 1684. 



CHAPTER XIII 



A BELATED CRUSADE 

The following story of a forlorn hope undertaken by a 
company of French gentlemen against the Turk in 
Crete has come down to us in a little book published 
in 1669 by a bookseller of Grenoble into whose hands 
the diary of a member of the expedition happened to 
fall. 

The event itself took place in the previous year, 
the twenty-first year of the siege of Candia, and to 
make the circumstances more intelligible it may be 
well to take a glance back over Cretan history. The 
island, when the Turks began to threaten it, had en- 
joyed Christian rule ever since the days of Constantine 
the Great, except for a brief possession by the Arabs 
in the caliphate of Harun er-Rashid. The Venetian 
occupation dated back to 1207 when the Republic 
secured the island in a rather curious manner. As a 
part of the Byzantine empire it had fallen to the leaders 
of the fourth crusade when they abandoned their cam- 
paign against the Saracens and captured Constantinople. 
Baldwin I, on crowning himself emperor, allotted Crete 
to one of his subalterns, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat 
and "King of Thessalonica," who, finding the property 
of little use to himself, sold it to Venice for 1000 marks 
and a portion of territory in Macedonia. 

The island had thus been a Venetian colony for 



180 A Belated Crusade 



nearly five centuries at the time of its invasion by a 
Turkish army in 1644. In that year one of the wives 
of the Sultan (the degenerate Ibrahim) happened to be 
going on a pilgrimage to Mecca and was sailing past 
Crete in a Turkish ship when they met a Venetian 
galley which promptly captured the vessel. The sultana 
was taken prisoner together with the rest of the 
passengers, and this so infuriated the sultan that he 
at once declared war on Venice. His first act was to 
send his Vizir with an army to Crete under orders to 
capture the island. Canea (the modern capital) was 
taken almost immediately, Retimo, another of the 
three main towns, fell a year later and Candia alone 
held out. Into this fortress, behind fortifications so 
tremendously solid that — except where intentionally 
demolished — they stand intact to this day, the Governor 
of the island, Morosini, withdrew with his troops and 
endured a siege of twenty years. 

Though locked in this fortress on the land, the 
Venetians maintained the upper hand on the sea, which 
enabled them to keep the garrison supplied with pro- 
visions and reinforcements. By 1668, however, their 
resources were nearly exhausted ; twenty years' warfare 
had emptied the treasury almost to the last sequin and 
the garrison of Candia, long unrelieved, were clearly 
unable to hold out much longer. When things reached 
this pass the Pope intervened in the name of religion 
and sent a pressing appeal to Louis XIV to assist in 
repulsing the infidel. A definite breach with the Turks 
was too great a risk for Louis, but he salved his con- 
science by privately ordering one of his officers, a 
certain M. de la Feuillade, to raise volunteers to go to 
the help of the Venetians at Candia in the guise of 



An Advenhire on the IV ay 181 

private adventurers. Five hundred nobles and gentle- 
men of France volunteered for the enterprise and in 
the autumn of the year sailed out from Toulon in ships 
flying the flag of Malta. 

When off the Sardinian coast they found themselves 
windbound near the bay of Palmas and there met with 
an adventure which is worthy of mention if only to 
show how little the inhabitants of that island had 
advanced from the primitive state by the end of the 
seventeenth century. A party from the ship going 
ashore found a number of roughly made skiffs drawn 
up on rollers near the foot of the cliffs in front of a row 
of troglodytes' caves. They entered a cave and dis- 
covered hanging from the roof a quantity of game 
which they promptly annexed for theirown commissariat. 
As they were leaving with their plunder, a crowd of 
" ugly great satyres" emerged from neighbouring caves 
and set on them with clubs and boulders, trying to 
head them off from their boat. Luckily their friends 
of the ship perceived their predicament and an armed 
crew rowed to the shore just in time to save them from 
the fury of the despoiled islanders. 

Twenty-five days out from Toulon the ship reached 
Malta, where M. de la Feuillade interviewed the Grand 
Master and begged him, for the honour of his Order 
and the Holy Catholic Church, to do what he could to 
forward the expedition. An appeal for volunteers was 
answered by nearly all the French knights at Valetta, 
a fair number of the Germans and Italians and a 
solitary Spaniard, and with this accession to their force 
the party sailed on towards Crete. 

Thirteen days later they anchored off Standia, an 
island lying some half-a-dozen miles from Candia and 



1 82 A Belated Crusade 



serving the Venetians as a naval base for the island. 
The same evening their leader was taken to the main- 
land to confer with General Morosini. The situation 
which he found on arrival was a very unpleasant shock 
to his religious ardour. A small French force under 
the Marquis de Ville had for some time past formed 
part of the garrison and an important redoubt, the 
bastion of St Andre, had been committed to them to 
defend. But the strain of the interminable siege, added 
to the jealousy between the two nations, had raised ill- 
feeling between them to such a pitch that the Venetian 
commanders had recently made a traitorous anddastardly 
attempt to get rid of their allies by a secret arrangement 
with the Turks. The latter were invited to attack the 
bastion on a certain day when the Venetians were to 
fire their guns on the Frenchmen from the rear. By a 
fortunate chance the Marquis de Ville intercepted a 
letter and learnt of the plot. He kept his own counsel, 
but made quiet arrangements to embark all his men, 
and having done so successfully, sailed straight off to 
Venice and laid his charge before the Senate. The 
Senate, to save their country's fair name, heavily bribed 
the Marquis to hush up the matter and sail back to 
Candia as though nothing had happened. The bribe 
did its work and the Frenchmen returned to the island 
shortly before their compatriots arrived on the scene. 

The Turks meantime had taken the bastion 
abandoned by the French and blown it up with gun- 
powder, thus making a serious breach in the defences 
and bringing the forces so close to each other that the 
soldiers could actually touch one another with the ends 
of their muskets and exchange food and tobacco. As 
soon as M. de la Feuillade had brought his men into 



A Desperate Enterprise 183 



harbour — which he managed to do with very slight loss 
from the Turkish batteries commanding the entrance 
— Morosini assigned to them a place in the line near the 
ruins of St Andre's bastion. 

The new arrivals were full of eagerness for the fray 
and at once began a series of raids on the Turkish 
trenches carried out at night by parties of twenty or so 
armed with grenades, pots-a-feu and other devices for 
harrying the enemy in his earthworks. Not content 
with this they presently clamoured for a general sortie. 
The Venetians' ardour had had time to cool in the 
long years of the siege, and at first Morosini refused to 
listen to any suggestion of the sort. The most that 
M. de la Feuillade managed to extort by importunate 
pleading was a grudging promise to support the French 
with the garrison artillery if they chose to conduct an 
attack "on their own." 

The French held a council of war in their camp 
and it was unanimously carried that sedentary warfare 
was unworthy of the traditions of the noblesse de France 
and that chivalry demanded more brilliant feats of arms. 
It was therefore resolved to launch a determined offen- 
sive on the part of the Turkish lines opposite their 
sector of the fortifications. By this time, as a result of 
disease and casualties in the raids, the numbers of the 
force had dwindled to barely 450. These, with another 
100 men, lent at the last moment by Morosini, attacked 
at daybreak on December 16th a force of 2500 Turks. 

Each man in the attack carried a half-pike and a 
pair of pistols, swords having proved themselves value- 
less weapons against the Turkish scimitars. Armour 
was not worn because of the sultry weather. The odds 
in favour of the Turks were further enhanced by the 



184 A Belated Crusade 



fact that they possessed far better muskets than the 
Christians and were admittedly better shots. 

The Venetians refused to allow any gates to be 
opened to let the attacking party out of the fortress, 
so the latter were reduced to knocking a hole through 
the wall large enough to give passage to one man at a 
time. Creeping through this aperture while it was still 
dark, they lined up in the " fausse-braye " immediately 
under the walls and waited for dawn. 

The signal for the start was given by a grenade 
fired from the battlements above, and the attackers at 
once rushed forward under a heavy fire from the 
Turkish trenches which, in their turn, were pounded 
by the Venetian guns. The French crusaders had 
spent the previous night in prayer and devotion and 
a religious fervour spurred them on to victory or 
martyrdom. One of their priests, Pere Paul by name, 
a Capucin monk, took the lead and, with a crucifix 
held aloft, forged recklessly ahead across the Turkish 
lines followed by his countrymen. The Turks fought 
desperately as the Frenchmen forced them back and 
the slaughter was terrific, the Turkish killed — according 
to a prisoner captured next day — amounting to twice the 
total number of their assailants. Reinforcements, how- 
ever, soon began to pour in from other parts of the 
line and it became clear that if the advance continued 
the French force would be cut off beyond hope of 
retirement. Seeing this, M. de la Feuillade hastened 
ahead and, catching up Pere Paul with the greatest 
difficulty, succeeded, after addressing "une petite repri- 
mande " to the priest, in checking his wild career and 
turned his men back towards the fortress. When they 
began to retire, the Turks, never dreaming that such a 



The Toll of Valour 



185 



handful of men could have dared to attack without 
strong reserves, and suspecting a trap, held back from 
pursuing them. Thus the survivors effected their re- 
treat and regained the fortress by the miserable opening 
through which they had issued. 

When the roll was called after the battle only a few 
score were found to remain of the gallant 500 who had 
sailed from Toulon and the hundred or so knights who 
had joined them from Malta. They decided therefore 
to wait only for some of the wounded to recover before 
sailing back to France. The war-worn remnant were 
not put back in the line but spent the interval in the 
town itself which gave them the chance of observing 
conditions in Candia. 

It was found that the place contained an extra- 
ordinarily mixed population. The prospect of Turkey 
obtaining a foothold so far west as Crete had awakened 
a glimmer of the old solidarity among the European 
nations, many of whom, like the French, had sent con- 
tingents to help the Venetians in defending the island. 
Hence the garrison of about 7000 was a most cos- 
mopolitan force including, besides the Venetians and 
their Greek and Slav subjects, representatives of other 
Italian States, French, Germans, Swiss, Savoyards and 
knights of St John of Jerusalem. 

The whole of this force, and the native population 
as well, " fed," as the diarist puts it, " on the bread of 
St Mark " ; in other words, they drew all their pro- 
visions from Venice. Rations were consequently ex- 
ceedingly short and even the wounded in hospital lived 
chiefly on broth made from bread-crumbs, a diet " not 
very agreeable to the taste, nor calculated to restore 
strength to sick men, but a good reducer of fever." 



1 86 A Belated Crusade 



At last in the middle of January M. de la Feuillade 
re-embarked his men and, choosing a murky night, 
slipped out of the harbour unharmed by the salvos of 
cannon-balls with which the Turks sped his departure. 

Even now their trials were not over, for being 
caught in one of the furious storms which habitually 
rage round Crete, they were driven southward from 
their course and nearly wrecked on the Barbary coast. 
No sooner was this peril past than plague broke out on 
the ship and carried off many of the remaining survivors. 
Touching again at Valetta, they landed their Maltese 
friends and then sailed on to Toulon which they reached 
by the end of February. 

Here one of the party, celebrating a quarantaine 
in thankfulness to God for his safe home-coming, 
employed the leisure it gave him in writing up the 
diary from which the foregoing pages are borrowed. 

The year was not out before Candia fell. Venice 
then concluded a peace with the Turks, surrendering 
Crete all but Suda Bay and a couple of second-rate 
fortresses ; even these were yielded to the Turks in the 
course of the next few years. It is interesting to note 
that Francesco Morosini, the defender of Candia, be- 
came soon afterwards Doge of Venice. 



CHAPTER XIV 



A BUNDLE OF GLEANINGS 

One of the most entertaining of English writers of 
Turkish travels was a certain Dr Covel, Fellow of 
Christ's College, Cambridge, and later Vice-Chancellor 
of the University. In 1675, when on his way to the 
East he found himself a spectator at the circumcision 
festivities of a Turkish Prince. The boy, whom Covel 
describes as an "ugly ill-favoured chit," was the son of 
Sultan Murad III and the ceremony took place at 
Adrianople where his father was then in camp. 

It was a charitable Turkish custom for a rich man, 
when his son was circumcised, to allow a number of 
poor boys, whose parents could not afford the cost of a 
decent ceremony, to share in the rite. In the case of 
princes of the royal blood the fortunate urchins received 
afterwards the name of " Prince's pensioners" and drew 
three aspers a day for life from the privy purse. Accom- 
panied by a score or so of his future "pensioners" Prince 
Mustafa was led on horseback to his father's tent. 

As the weather was hot he had men riding on either 
side with large fans of Bustard's feathers to fan him 
and shelter him from the sun ; sakkas with water-skins 
ran in front sprinkling the road and a corps of tooloonjis, 
as they were called, kept back the crowd with the aid 
of blown-out bladders daubed in tar, from which, the 
observant don remarks, "the spruce Turks fly as from 
the Divel." 



1 88 A Bundle of Gleanings 



A procession followed in which the most remarkable 
feature consisted of a number of so-called nakuls. These 
peculiar objects were in somewhat the form of a may- 
pole, being upright poles with wire cones on the top 
covered with coloured paper ornaments and little wax 
flowers and fruits. Two specially large ones, nearly 
30 feet high, were supported on frameworks carried by 
100 slaves each, whose movements were directed, as 
though they were the crew of a ship, by a galley- 
master standing on top and giving blasts on a whistle. 
When the procession reached the camp the Prince was 
received with kisses by his father, and the nakuls, which 
served no other purpose than ornament, were planted 
in front of the tent. 

The ceremony was then performed by the Sultan's 
chief surgeon, an Italian renegade who received as his 
fee a sum equivalent to ^6000 (so, at least, he assured 
Covel) which was presented to him by the Valida, the 
prince's mother, in a silver basin. 

On the evening of the day a public fete was held in 
front of the camp, and Covel gives an interesting account 
of the various sports and side-shows, which were sur- 
prisingly like those at an English fair. First he de- 
scribes the dancing. The dancers, who in this case were 
men, wore tights with elaborate girdles and a full petti- 
coat "of some merry colour" reaching to their ankles. 
A space was cleared for them into which they came 
bounding on and forming up in a semicircle performed 
"wriggling" dances to the accompaniment of castanets; 
they finished the dance with a giddy twirl and with a 
bow to the audience bounded off again. 

There were pantomimes in which men dressed up 
as beasts, notably a large deer, "played 1000 freakes" 



Pyrotechnical Marvels 189 



and there were games such as follow-my-leader in 
which the actors had to copy faithfully the elaborate 
gestures and grimaces of their captain. The familiar 
strong man was represented by a bostanji who juggled 
with balls of stone and stood with bare feet on the edges 
of scimitars; his fellow, having rigged a pulley on some 
scaffolding and taken a young camel on his shoulders, 
pulled himself up off the ground by a rope secured to 
his own hair. An elderly Arab, whom Covel describes as 
"exceeding black and shrivelled, his head bald and 
shining like soot and clad like a Dominican," performed 
the time-honoured trick of producing such objects as 
snakes and eggs from the onlookers' noses and other 
parts of their anatomy. 

Bear-baiting with mastiffs went on at one spot, 
wrestling at another and an opera company (imported 
en bloc by the Venetian ambassador to honour the 
occasion) performed elsewhere. 

But the great feature of all was the fireworks, for 
which the Turks have always had a great affection, 
though, as with many other inventions which they 
adopted from their Christian neighbours, they relied on 
foreigners to supply the technical skill. A Venetian 
and a Dutchman were the experts on the present 
occasion, and they seem to have provided a display 
of which even Mr Brock might be proud. Some of 
their set pieces were truly wondrous confections. There 
were enormous figures of giants made of wooden 
hoops covered with paper, their hollow insides filled with 
crackers which spurted out of ears, nose and mouth 
when the machine was fired ; movable pyramids hung 
all over with little dishes of camphor which were all lit 
at once; paste-board castles spouting fountains of fire; 



190 A Bundle of Gleanings 

a small replica of the old Venetian fort at Candia (which 
had braved a Turkish siege for 20 years) with men con- 
cealed inside who let off rockets through the port holes, 
and — the most wonderful show of all — a mock naval 
battle between model ships of war which were slung 
from cross-beams and manoeuvred by their crews with 
the help of running ropes while they fired broadsides of 
blank cartridge at each other. A wholesale discharge 
of star rockets brought the fite to a finish. 

The subject of Turkish festivities brings us to a 
description given by another writer, of the extravagant 
sights to be seen at a royal wedding. On the day of 
the ceremony the Princess rode through the streets of 
the capital in a silver-plated coach with all the iron work 
picked out in gold and an awning edged with precious 
stones. She was drawn by six white horses in harness 
of gold and silver with jewelled plumes stuck in their 
brow-bands. There were postilions on the horses and 
on each side of the coach rode eunuchs scattering 
largesse to the crowd. The Sultan's presents to his 
daughter were also paraded through the town. They 
included a wax model of a garden with birds and beasts, 
trees and flowers and clockwork fountains and other 
models in sugar in the forms of peacocks, ostriches, lions, 
elephants and sundry other beasts. Among the more 
substantial gifts there were rolls of stuffs, jewelled 
slippers, gold-framed mirrors, girdles and bracelets, 
bottles of rare scent, cabinets and dress-boxes, a beautiful 
sable vest with diamond and ruby buttons, and finally a 
team of thirty mules loaded with little painted chests full 
of bullion and a complete household staff of janissaries. 

The writer mentions that one of the events in the 
sports held to celebrate the wedding was the feat of a 



C/3 a) 

K/ S-i 

o 

5 o 



Cafs Meat 



191 



man who walked up a rope stretched from the ground 
to the top of one of the minarets of Sultan Selim's 
mosque, down which he afterwards slid with a boy on 
his shoulders hanging by his hair from a pulley. 

A Turkish trait which most of the old writers refer 
to is their kindness to animals. Anyone who knew Con- 
stantinople in the days before the great massacre of the 
street dogs will remember how Turkish households 
would adopt and feed families of these mangey brutes, 
and an amusing example of this soft-heartedness of the 
people of Stambul towards the brute creation is given 
by a writer who visited the town rather more than two 
hundred years ago. 

"It is customary," he says, "among Turks to boil 
and bake paunches, lights, livers and pieces of meat and 
carry them in wooden buckets up and down the City 
crying out 'Cats Meat.' The Turks buy the food and 
give it to the Cats who sit on the walls for they imagine 
that they obtain especial favour in the eyes of God by 
giving alms even to irrational cattle, cats, dogs, fish, 
birds and other live creatures; and therefore they con- 
sider it a great sin to kill and destroy captured birds, 
and prefer to ransome them with money and release 
them. They throw bread to fishes and give food to cats 
and dogs at definite times and places. The cats break- 
fast in good time in the morning and assemble for the 
second time at the hour of the evening meal in large 
bodies out of the whole City. 

"We went purposely to these walls, listened to their 
caterwauling and with great laughter watched how they 
ran out of the houses and assembled. So, too, we saw 
Turkish Matrons and old women buying pieces of meat 
on the spit from the kitchen boys and handing them on 



192 



A Bundle of Gleanings 



a long wand to the cats, muttering meanwhile a kind of 
Turkish prayer," 

Another English writer mentions that birds were 
always allowed to feed as much as they liked from the 
great granaries, several thousand dollars a year being 
written off the accounts to balance their depredations. 
The birds in Turkey being never molested, were so 
tame that, he adds, " I have thrown my coat over turtle 
doves in the highways, and quails would ordinarly hop 
upon our legs and arms as we slept in the fields." 

The natural charitableness of the Turk found 
another outlet in the erection by wealthy men of hos- 
pices all over the country for the benefit of wayfarers. 
Lodging was gratis and any genuine traveller, be he 
Turk, Jew, infidel or heretic, was allowed to rest for 
three days on end in any of these khans, during which 
time he had the use of a room to sleep in and a generous 
ration of bread, rice and honey. Some of the larger 
hostels, built for a great part by members of the im- 
perial family, had accommodation for a thousand guests. 

These monuments of charity were in such strange 
contrast with the brutality towards the subject races of 
Turkey that Blunt compares them to "daintie fruits 
growing on a Dunghill." As outward signs of sub- 
servience to their conquerors, Ottoman Christians had 
to paint their houses black, wear nothing but black 
clothes and when riding, dismount whenever they met 
a Moslem. Christian travellers from foreign countries, 
on the other hand, were seldom molested if they walked 
circumspectly and studiously avoided offending against 
native susceptibilities in manners or dress. 

An English traveller remarks that" if ever I appeared 
clothed in the least part like an Englishman, I was 



A Lesson in Modesty 193 

tufted like an Owle among birds. This I at first im- 
puted to Barbarism but on lamenting thereof to a Turk 
of the better sort, he told me his nation would stand no 
novelties and therefore disgraced all new examples; so 
that I perceived it to be rather a piece of Institution 
than any incivilitie." As a practical instance he tells 
the following story. 

'T clad in Turkish manner was riding with two 
Turks an hour ahead of the caravan. We found four 
Spahi Timariots by a river where we stayed; they were 
at dinner and seeing by my head I was a Christian they 
called to me. I not understanding what they would, 
stood still till they menacing their weapons, rose and 
came to me with looks very ugly. I smilingly met them 
and taking him who seemed of most port by the hand 
layed it to my forehead, which with them is the greatest 
sign of love and honour. Then, often calling him Sul- 
tanum, spoke English which, though none of the kindest, 
gave I it such a sound as to them who understood no 
further might seem affectionate, humble and hearty. 
This so appeased them as they made me sit and eat 
and we parted lovingly ; presently after, they met the 
Caravan where was a Ragusan merchant of quality. 
He being clothed in the Italian fashion and spruce, they 
justled him and he not yet considering how the place 
had changed his condition, stood upon his terms till 
they with their axes and iron maces broke two of his 
ribs, in which case we left him behind half-dead either 
to get back as he could or be devoured of beasts." 

A danger from which foreigners in Turkey were 
never quite free was that of being seized by a chance 
Turk, usually a Janissary, and sold as a slave to the 
first slave buyer. Indeed the author of the last quota- 

h. 13 



194 A Bundle of Gleanings 



tions mentions that on one occasion he was attacked 
by a sort of press-gang who tried to hustle him into a 
house, presumably for this purpose, and was only saved 
by using his knife. 

In spite of the barriers which the Turks set up 
against their Christian fellows, they were, on the whole, 
not a fanatical nation. To show how tolerant even a 
religious functionary could be on occasion, I will repeat 
a story told by an amusing French artist named Grelot 
who visited Constantinople in the latter half of the 
17th century to make drawings of its principal buildings 
and other features, which he published with a dedica- 
tion to Louis XIV in 1680. 

In order to sketch the interior of Santa Sofia, Grelot 
had to arrange for admission to the galleries under the 
great dome. He first approached a Greek jeweller of 
his acquaintance who kept a shop in the mosque 
precincts and was introduced by him to one of the 
kandil-agassis, or lamp-trimmers. With the help of a 
cheap watch, bought for the occasion from his friend the 
jeweller, Grelot overcame any scruples of the lamp- 
trimmer about allowing a Christian into the mosque for 
so doubtful a purpose as sketching, and the next day, 
dressed a la turque and wearing a long false beard, he 
was smuggled in. Each day he entered before sunrise, 
spent the day hidden in a dark corner of the gallery and 
emerged again after sunset and continued to do so until 
he completed an elaborate set of sketches, suffering no 
greater inconvenience than that of having to meet 
frequent demands for further bakhshish from his accom- 
plice the lamp-trimmer. But on the very last day he was 
seized with a mischievous desire to play a trick on the 
Mohammedans by committing a shocking act of sacrilege 



The Story of the Dervish and the Lamps 1 95 

unknown to the worshippers in the mosque. So he 
bought a bologna sausage and a bottle of wine and, 
having smuggled them into his usual nook in the gallery, 
sat down, after finishing his drawing, to a hearty meal. 
To his unutterable horror just as he had cut up his 
sausage and was raising the bottle to his lips an elderly 
Turk appeared round a corner of the gallery. He hastily 
stuffed his papers in his pockets, bundled sausage and 
bottle under his skirts and fell into the posture of a 
moslem at prayer. The Turk came up and told him 
that the door of the gallery was about to be shut and 
he must descend at once. The wretched Frenchman, 
unable to move without discovering the damning relics 
of his meal, had already resigned himself to a horrible 
death when the Turk burst into a roar of laughter 
and told him that he had witnessed his performance 
from the start, strongly advising him to avoid such 
foolishness in the future. He then revealed himself as 
a mosque official who was party to the plot for admitting 
Grelot to the building and a sharer, of course, in the 
bribes extorted by the kandil-agassi. 

It is Grelot again who tells the story of a dervish 
who sought and obtained from the imam of a mosque 
in the outskirts of the city permission to spend his nights 
praying in the sanctuary. The dervish belonged to a 
poor and ascetic order and was very lean and emaciated. 
His nightly vigils appeared to do him good, for he soon 
grew better favoured and by the end of a month showed 
positive signs of plumpness. Meantime the imam had 
more than once been surprised and annoyed by the 
sudden extinction of some of the lamps which, as is 
usual in Turkish mosques, hung in large numbers on 
chains from the roof. At a late hour one night he 



196 A Bundle of Gleanings 



happened to enter the mosque to see to their filling, and 
there was the dervish sitting on the ground with three 
or four lamps around him — safe as he thought from 
censorious eyes — and enjoying an excellent repast of 
hunks of bread soaked in olive oil ! 

The story can the more easily be credited as many of 
the Turkish dervishes were, like their cousins the friars, 
most accomplished hypocrites. Nicholas de Nicolay, 
gdographe ordinaire to Charles IX of France, who 
travelled for many years through Turkey collecting 
data of every description for his royal master, has left 
a description of the various dervish orders flourishing 
in his day. 

One, which he calls "Geomailers" (an unrecogniz- 
able title) consisted, he writes, of gay young men whose 
sole ambition in taking their vows was to see the world '> 
in jolly company and at other peoples' expense. They 
journey about, he says, singing amatory songs to the 
accompaniment of cymbals and making love to all the 
ladies they meet. Their only garment is a short tunic 
of purple, bound with a silken sash ending in a tassel 
of bells ; they have bells again round their legs fastened 
below the knee like garters, and they sometimes wear 
a lion skin over their shoulders with the forelegs knotted 
in front. They take pride in their hair, which they wear 
excessively long, even twining in portions of goat's hair 
(the long-haired Angora variety, of course) to increase 
its natural length. 

To the Calenders he gives a better character as 
sincere and devout ascetics ; but a third order, whom he 
calls simply "dervis," he describes in anything but 
flattering terms. They spend the winter, he says, in 
their tekyds but during the summer they range the 




A " GEOMAILER " 
From Nicolay's Peregrinations f aides en la Turqnie, 1577 



Mohammed \s Fowls 197 



country committing "mechancetes et volleries" under 
the aegis of sanctity. They will rob any one they meet 
and with the hatchet which they carry in their belts they 
are ready to crack in the skull of a lonely traveller on 
the smallest possible excuse. 

As for their appearance, he adds that they shave 
the whole head, brand their foreheads with irons, wear 
jasper earrings and dress in a pair of sheepskins worn 
one down the back and the other on the chest and tied 
together down the sides. Often members of this order 
would catch wild creatures, such as wolves, bears, 
eagles and stags, and lead them about with bells round 
their necks as evidence that they had renounced the 
world and adopted the life of the beasts of the 
field. 

To turn to another subject, the art of witchcraft has at 
all times been abominated by the Turks. A propos of this 
an old French traveller relates that on landing once at 
Gallipoli he found quite a colony of sorceresses, mostly 
Jewish, who compounded love-potions, sold charms 
and worked magic. They were careful however to 
practise their trade in secret, for the chorbaji was always 
on the watch and anyone apprehended in witchcraft 
was at once put in a sack and thrown into the straits. 

Superstition, on the other hand, was by no means 
foreign to the Turk and there is a rather curious case 
referred to in more than one of the old travel books. 
Briefly told the facts are as follows. At a place called 
Kerch in Asia Minor there existed a well of magical 
healing powers. Round the well lived a peculiar species 
of birds of a largish size and red and black plumage which 
were called "Mohammed's fowls." These birds made 
their principal diet off locusts and attacked them so 



198 A Bundle of Gleanings 



vigorously whenever they appeared that a plague of the s 
insects would be entirely devoured in a few hours. This 
trait in the birds was of course invaluable in a part of the 
world where locusts abound. But the birds — and here I { \ 
comes the superstition — had another peculiarity of their I t j 
own which seriously diminished their usefulness; they L 
could only live in the vicinity of water from the miracu- ( 
lous well. A single drop of the water was sufficient, but 
in its absence they slowly languished and died. It is 1 
related that the locust plague was especially bad in 
Cyprus and for years the Cypriots regularly lost the 
greater part of their crops. At last they chanced to hear 
of Mohammed's fowls and sent a mission to the remote 
Anatolian village. They were allowed to take a pitcher 
of the water and returned with it, followed by several 
of the birds. The pitcher was carefully lodged on the 
top of a tower in the middle of the island and for 
some generations the birds and the crops flourished. 
Then one year the former suddenly vanished. The 
anxious Cypriots went to their tower and examined the 
pitcher; it had sprung a leak and was dry. 

The practice of medicine, like most of the sciences, 
was limited almost entirely to Greeks and other 
Christians. The Turks indeed have always credited 
Christians with peculiar powers of healing derived, 
they believe, by transmission from Christ Himself, 
whom Mohammedans recognize, as the reader probably 
knows as one of the greatest of the "prophets." The 
consequence is that a person who is both a Christian 
and a recognized doctor commands very great confi- 
dence and a large clientele. 

As an instance we have the story — told by 
M. Tournefort, another geographer royal — of an Irish 



A Pasha in a Powdering Tub 199 

surgeon who, after serving in the wars in France, went 
out to Turkey attached to the French Ambassador to 
the Porte. Their ship touched at Crete some years after 
the conquest of the island by Turkey, and it happened 
that a new Viceroy had just arrived, one Ali Pasha an 
ex-Grand Vizer, suffering from a grievous distemper. 
On greeting the Ambassador the first thing he asked 
him was to lend him the services of his surgeon, so our 
Irish friend went ashore to do what he could to relieve 
him. He examined his patient and, diagnosing his 
trouble, popped him into a "powdering-tub." 

I am entirely ignorant of the properties of this 
antique apparatus but the treatment seems to have 
been drastic, for when at the height of his ' 'salivation" 
the Pasha concluded he was dying and summoned his 
Council to decide on a punishment for the surgeon. 
The Council wisely advised that having made a begin- 
ning of the cure he should carry it through to the end 
and suspend sentence on the surgeon in the meantime. 
This he grudgingly consented to do and presently, the 
inflammation subsiding, he emerged from the treat- 
ment cured. The Irishman was suitably rewarded with 
a dress of honour and other presents, but he had little 
peace during the rest of his stay in Candia for every 
sick agha in the island flocked to his powdering tub and 
he was, as M. Tournefort puts it, " tired out of his life 
anointing Musulmans." 



CHAPTER XV 



A PRISONER IN THE GALLEYS AND 
THE BLACK TOWER 

(i) 

Of all the grim fates which could befall a Christian 
gentleman in the sixteenth century none assuredly could 
exceed for sheer horror captivity in the hands of 
the Turks. Nor was it the remote danger which it 
might easily seem. The Turkish fleet, one must re- 
member, was manned to a very great extent by Chris- 
tian prisoners, some — and many Englishmen among 
them — captured from merchant vessels in the Mediter- 
ranean, others ordinary prisoners of war. Their total 
number at any given moment would have amounted to 
several thousands ; and the possibility of capture by the 
Turks entered sufficiently into the calculations of the 
men of that day to lead Luther to publish a little manual 
of advice for Protestant soldiers who might fall into 
Turkish hands. 

We have already read Busbequius's account of the 
melancholy scene when the remnants of a whole Chris- 
tian fleet were towed into the Golden Horn and the men 
taken off into thraldom, and there is hardly a writer of 
those days who does not refer to the miserable plight 
of his fellow countrymen languishing in the galleys or 
in the terrible " Black Tower" which stood at the Eastern 
mouth of the Bosphorus. Many are their stories of 
ransomings or escapes. Sandys tells the history of 



A n Exciting Escape 20 1 

Hadrian Cant, a Dutchman who escaped from the 
Tower and was smuggled by the English ambassador 
home to Holland while the Agha of the Tower, taking 
warning of the fate of his predecessor who in similar 
circumstances was "gauched," arranged a mock funeral 
and lowered a coffin full of stones and clay to the bot- 
tom of the Bosphorus. 

Grelot, the artist, recounts again how a certain M. 
de Beaujeu, a knight of Malta, after 16 years of intern- 
ment in the Seven Towers (the prison for persons of 
rank), broke out by night and took to the sea chased by 
dogs, was hit on the head by the oar of a passing caique 
and nearly drowned but managed to flounder on board 
the vessel of M. d'Aplemont, the French ambassador 
who was just then sailing for home; how the gaoler 
having on this occasion duly reported the escape, the 
ship was stopped at the Dardanelles by the Sultan's 
orders and a demand made for the surrender of the 
prisoner and how M. d'Aplemont returned a spirited 
reply that the first man who came on board to fetch his 
guest would swing from the yardarm, and finally, with 
his guns trained on the forts, bluffed his way through, 
the crew — as it happened to be Christmas Day — singing 
a mass on deck as they sailed down the straits. 

Hakluyt too has preserved the account of "the 
woorthy enterprise of John Foxe in delivering 266 
Christians out of captivitie of the Turkes," that stirring 
feat of an English ship's gunner who rescued himself and 
his friends from a living death after fourteen years in the 
galleys, of which fragments have already been quoted. 

But the best and fullest history of a Christian's 
experiences as a prisoner in Turkey is one which was 
written in 1599 by a young Bohemian noble and trans- 



202 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

lated into English in the middle of the last century by 
his lineal descendant the Rev. A. H. Wratislaw, Head- 
master of Bury St Edmunds Grammar School. 

Baron Wencelaus Wratislaw (for such was the young 
man's name) was, to use his own words, "entrusted by 
my relatives to the care of Frederic Kregwitz, who was 
sent to Constantinople with rich presents, in the year 
1591, by his Majesty the Roman Emperor Rudolph II, 
as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Turkish Emperor, 
Sultan Amurath III The object of my relatives was, 
that I should gain experience and see eastern countries." 

After passing by Augsburg to buy jewellery as pre- 
sents for the Turks, Herr von Kregwitz and his suite 
embarked in boats on the Danube, carrying their coaches 
with them, and rowed down to the frontier near Raab. 
Here they were met by a Turkish flotilla and towed on 
past Buda-Pesth (then a Turkish town) to Belgrade, 
whence they drove overland to Constantinople. 

At Constantinople the embassy lived comfortably 
for some weeks, during which Baron Wratislaw made 
the most of his time by exploring the capital and getting 
into various scrapes. The Hungarian tribute, however, 
had just then fallen into arrear and Murad (to use the 
modern and more correct rendering of the Sultan's name) 
began to show himself very disagreeable. 

The Grand Vizir was an ambitious old man named 
Sinan Pasha, who had started life as an Albanian swine- 
herd, had been taken for an ajami oghlan and became a 
palace cook, from which post, having captured the 
Sultan's fancy, he had risen successively to be page, 
captain of janissaries, beylerbey, pasha and now ulti- 
mately Grand Vizir. It came presently to the ambassa- 
dor's ears that Sinan, trading on the Sultan's cupidity, was 



A Base Betrayal 



203 



working up for a war on Hungary and that secret pre- 
parations for a campaign were already in progress. Deter- 
mined at all costs to give the Emperor warning, von 
Kregwitz at once began to employ secret agents to 
obtain information of the Turkish plans, and was so suc- 
cessful that after a time he actually had several of the 
vizirs and the Sultan-valida herself in his pay. The in- 
telligence he thus obtained was kept in a secret place 
in the embassy vaults. 

The Grand Vizir, growing suspicious, seized on the 
excuse of a fracas on the Hungarian frontier, in which 
some Turks had lost their lives, to intern the ambassador 
and his suite in their house, cutting them off from all 
communication with the outside world by placing a 
guard around and only allowing the inmates out to 
purchase food under a close escort. It happened just 
then that the embassy steward, one Ladislaw Morthen by 
name, got into trouble with the ambassador, who locked 
him up in his own room as a punishment. Morthen, 
indignant at this treatment, took the opportunity of the 
main door being opened to admit one of the janissaries, 
to break open his door and rush into the street shouting 
out that he was a convert to Islam. He was taken to 
Sinan, to whom he betrayed all that his master had been 
doing and told of the hidden papers. 

The following day the Turks searched the embassy 
and found the incriminating documents. Von Kregwitz 
was taken away and apparently never heard of again. 
The fate of the others forms our present story, which 
from this point onwards shall be told in Wratislaw s 
own words, his narrative, which is somewhat diffuse in 
parts, being condensed within the necessary limits. 

'After about two hours we saw people running from 



204 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

all quarters by thousands to our house, placing them- 
selves in rows, and creeping on the roofs, and at last 
so many collected that we could not see to the end of them. 
Not knowing what this indicated and what kind of spec- 
tacle was about to be exhibited, we imagined at first that 
some part of our house was on fire ; till, after a short time, 
we saw the guard which was usually employed at exe- 
cutions making straight for our hotel. Behind this guard 
rode the sub-pasha, the judges, the head-executioners, 
heralds, and under-executioners, bearing fetters in their 
hands. The eyes of all the people were then directed 
upon us. When they arrived at the house, the sub-pasha 
and the other Turks dismounted : the janissaries opened 
our house with a noise and shout and led and dragged 
all of us, wherever they could seize us, down the gal- 
leries and out of the house. They then opened the door, 
and counted us out, one after the other, for they had a list 
of us all. Then an executioner took each by his iron 
ring, the sub-pasha mounted his horse, the guards began 
to close round us, and make a way through the people. 
As I could not stand upon my feet, they brought me a 
Turk, whom they call a hamola, or porter, who carries 
all manner of things from the sea about the city for hire, 
on whose pannier, which was stuffed with rushes, they 
perched me like a landrail, and I sat upon it like a dog 
on a bank. [Wratislaw was suffering from dysentery at 
the time.] 

They led us, for greater disgrace and ridicule, through 
the most populous squares and streets, and it was very 
hot weather, so that we could have died for excessive 
thirst. Some pitied us, others gnashed their teeth at us, 
and said the best place we could go to was the gallows. 
When they had led us up and down the city to their 



Beneath the Gallows 205 



satisfaction, they conducted us straight to the sand-gate, 
where the fish-market is held. On both sides of us, in 
front and behind, walked a countless multitude of people, 
for never before had so many persons been seen led to 
execution at once. Looking round I saw John von 
Winorz, the priest, and asked him where we were. He 
answered that we were not far from the gallows, and, 
therefore, had better resign ourselves to the Will of God, 
and commit our souls to Him. Meanwhile, we kept 
advancing further, the janissaries making a road for us 
by the use of their sticks. When I saw the hooks on 
the gallows, and two executioners upon it holding the 
pullies, I immediately lost my self-command, swooned, 
and became entirely unconscious. Nor did we expect 
aught else than that they would hang us all up, since 
that was exactly the course of proceeding which they 
observed with others at their execution. 

My comrades related to me afterwards (for, as afore- 
said, I had lost the power of thought and recollection, 
as well as sensation) that, when they brought us under 
the gallows, two more executioners climbed up, and 
meanwhile a judge addressed us to the following effect, 
telling us that we saw a terrible death before our eyes, 
and, therefore, for the great compassion which he felt 
for us, promised, by the head of the Sultan, his lord, 
that our lives should be granted us if we would but turn 
Mahometans. But, by the grace of God, none of us did 
this, but we were all ready to lose our lives in preference ; 
although, on the other hand, we were so overwhelmed 
by fear of death that none of us knew whether he was 
alive or dead. 

After remaining still for about a quarter of an hour, 
the sub-pasha gave orders to conduct us to the sea, 



206 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

which was close at hand. The vulgar, therefore, as they 
had not hung us on the hooks, had no other expectation 
but that they would drown us in the sea. Every living 
soul, therefore, ran down to the sea, and took their seats 
in boats and barges, for greater convenience in looking 
on. When they had brought us to the shore, they thrust 
us almost head-over-heels into a boat, in which camels 
and mules, with all manner of mercantile burdens are 
ferried over from Europe to Asia, cursing at us, mean- 
while, vehemently, and pushing us in such a manner 
that the poor wretches pulled each other down by their 
chains. Coming to myself again, I thanked my God 
that it had pleased Him to release me from that terrible 
death. Having thrust off from the shore, the chief judge 
and his attendants sailed with us in the boat, and we had 
no other idea but that they would drown us, or take us 
to that frightful black tower, on the Black Sea, for they 
turned with us in that direction. Then they stopped 
and asked us again whether we were willing to become 
Turks, saying that it was now our last hour, as they 
were about to drown us all by Synan Pasha's orders ; 
that we should, therefore, have compassion on our youth, 
and that they were willing to make imperial gentlemen- 
in-waiting, spahis, and janissaries of us, and give us fine 
clothes and horses. But we constantly prayed to God, 
and, committing ourselves to Him, persevered in saying 
that whatever pleased His gracious Goodness should 
be our fate, acknowledging that we had deserved all this 
misery by our sins. We had spectators round us in 
thousands, who wished to gaze upon our watery funerals, 
for the upper and under executioners were also with the 
judge in our boat. 

As soon as they saw our steadfastness, and that not 



In a Turkish Prison 



207 



one of us would become a Turk, they threatened us, 
and angrily impressed upon us that they would put us 
into such a prison that, when there, we should wish to 
be dead rather than alive. After bullying us till they 
were satisfied, they brought us round at last to the im- 
perial arsenal, or magazine, where there are many hun- 
dreds of various boats, and where stores of galleys, and 
other military requisites are kept in vaults. Having 
brought us to this place, the judges presented letters or 
orders from Ferhat Pasha to the Quardian Pasha, in- 
structing him how we were to be dealt with. After this 
the executioners took the chains and rings off our necks, 
and two or three of them ran up, and tripped up the feet 
of each, so that he fell on the ground. Here we poor 
wretches expected that they would beat us with a stick, 
but, thank God, that did not take place ; but gipsy smiths 
came, and putting an iron ring round the feet of one 
who lay on the ground, passed a chain through it, 
clinched it on an anvil, and then fastened a second, 
whom he selected, by the foot to the same chain. Seeing 
that this was all they did, each of us had himself coupled 
to the companion whom he liked best. As soon as two 
were coupled together, they were obliged to go imme- 
diately into the common prison. Not knowing to whom 
else to have myself fettered, I looked at our chaplain, my 
countryman, and asked him to have me fettered to him. 

In this prison there are three buildings. In the 
principal building there are captives of various nations, 
artizans who construct galleys, and divers other things; 
for instance, carpenters, joiners, smiths, ropemakers, 
sailclothmakers, locksmiths, and coopers, who are con- 
ducted every day into this or that workshop. These are 
the best off of all, for they have it in their power to filch 



208 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

things, sell them secretly, and buy something to eat : 
nay, when they work industriously, porridge is given 
them on Friday, (the Turkish Sunday), and, above all, 
they have hopes of release before the rest. Such prison- 
ers as are priests, scribes, scholars, citizens, or gentle- 
men, are in the greatest misery, because they have not 
learnt any handicraft, and no value is set upon them. 

The second prison is for common prisoners who 
know no handicraft. Of these there were then about 
700 persons, of all the various nations that there are 
beneath the sky. These are taken in the beginning of 
spring, on board the galleys as rowers. When they 
return from the voyage they must hew stone and 
marble, construct earthworks, carry materials for building, 
and in a word, like day-labourers, if there is any con- 
temptible work to be done anywhere, they must perform 
it. They receive from one year's end to another nothing 
more for food than two loaves of bread per diem, and 
water to drink. The Turks strike and beat them like 
cattle for the least misconduct. Nay, not even at night 
do they enjoy repose, but must go to work if anybody 
wants them. 

The third building is a hospital, in which the sick 
prisoners lie, and where the old men who are past work 
through age loiter about. These, besides bread, receive 
soup and porridge. This building is called Paul's prison. 
As long as they are there they are made comfortable; I 
when they get well, they must work to make up what j 
has been neglected; if they die, they are given to the 
prisoners to be buried, or thrown into the sea. 

There were then but few prisoners in the gaol, for I 
they had gone as rowers on board the war-boats, but I 
they were from time to time expected. They at length { 



A Prison Mass 209 

returned from rowing on board the vessels of war, and 
came into the gaol amongst us. Learning that we had 
a priest amongst us, they treated him very reverentially, 
and went all before the superintendent of the guard, and 
humbly besought him to allow them on certain days, 
which were hallowed among Christians, to perform 
Divine Service before daylight and before they went 
to their work. They offered to give him a present for 
this permission, which was, accordingly, granted them. 

Many years ago there had been an altar in the com- 
mon prison, consecrated by a regular bishop, and fenced 
round with rails ; and the prisoners possessed, also, a 
silver cup and the other requisites for the celebration 
of holy mass. On every great and apostolical festival our 
chaplain, who was temporarily released from his chains, 
celebrated holy mass, while I, with the chain, acted as 
acolyte, sang the epistle, and gave the prisoners the 
crucifix to kiss. They contributed alms according to 
their poverty, so that we always had a kreutzer or so 
by us for food, and were easily able to support ourselves. 
After mass the Turkish gipsies fettered the chaplain to 
me again by the chain. 

Once, on a festival after holy mass, a master- 
carpenter, a Christian prisoner, invited the chaplain and 
me to partake of a fine tabby tom-cat, which he had fed 
up for a long time and named Marko, It was a fine and 
well-fatted cat, and I saw, with my own eyes, when the 
carpenter cut his throat. As my partner, Mr Chaplain, 
would not go, and fettered together as we were I could 
not go without him, he sent us, as a present, a fore- 
shoulder of the cat, which I ate. It was nice meat, and 
I enjoyed it very much, for hunger is a capital cook, so 
that nothing makes one disgusted; and if I had only 

h. 14 



210 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

had plenty of such tom-cats, they would have done me 
no harm. 

At this time news arrived that our friends had ob- 
tained a glorious victory over the Turks in Hungary, 
and cut to pieces many thousands of them. On hearing 
this we were again in great terror, for the Turks looked 
sour at us, gnashed their teeth, and threatened to have 
us hung on the hooks. Then came the imperial kihaja, 
had us all called out, and said that they would cut off 
our noses and ears, because our friends, brothers, and 
cousins had slain so many Mussulmans. 

The pasha of the guard then came to our prison, 
bringing with him two barbers, or hair-cutters, had us 
all summoned out, and ordered us all to sit down on 
the ground. We all wept, and entertained no other 
idea but that it would be done as we had been told, 
and, therefore, no one was willing to be the first to sit , 
down, until the scourge compelled us so to do. Any- 
body can imagine how we, at this time, felt about the 
region of the heart. We were all as pale as a sheet, and 
the barbers, stepping up and seeing us so frightened, 
laughed heartily, and all our stomachs began to ache. 
When we had seated ourselves on the ground, instead 
of cutting off our noses and ears, they shaved our heads 
and beards with a razor, for some of us had their hair 
and beard grown to a considerable length, and, after 
laughing at us to their heart's content, bade us go back to 
prison. When our terror passed away, and we looked at 
and saw each other all clipped round and beardless, like ; . 
so many calves' heads, we could not help laughing, be- ; 
cause we could scarcely recognise one another. Neither . 
did we bear them any malice for the state of baldness 
to which they had reduced us, and they were satisfied 



Galley-Slaves 2 1 1 

with having frightened us abundantly about nothing. 
Afterwards more trustworthy Turks informed us that the 
grand vizier had really ordered our noses and ears to be 
cut off, and ourselves to be sent, thus shamefully handled, 
to Christendom; but the mufti, their chief bishop, on 
learning it, had opposed it, and would not allow that 
maltreatment to be inflicted upon us, as we had not 
waged war against them, but had only been attached 
to an embassy, and were in no wise in fault ; at any 
rate, he said, it would have been a sin to maltreat us 
thus. The grand vizier, not being able to revenge him- 
self upon us in any other way, had our heads and 
beards shaved with a razor, and the next day all of us 
chained to the oars amongst the other prisoners on 
board the galleys. 

We were conducted on board the galley, or large 
war-boat, under the care of a vigilant guard, and 
Achmet, the reis, or captain, who commanded on board 
the vessel, a Christian born in Italy, but who had now 
become a Turk, immediately received us and ordered us 
all to be chained to oars. The vessel was tolerably large, 
and in it five prisoners sat on a bench, pulling together 
at a single oar. It is incredible how great the misery 
of rowing in the galleys is ; no work in the world can 
be harder : for they chain each prisoner by one foot 
under his seat, leaving him so far free to move that he 
can get on the bench and pull the oar. When they are 
rowing, it is impossible, on account of the great heat, 
to pull otherwise than naked, without any upper clothing, 
and with nothing on the whole body but a pair of linen 
trousers. When such a boat sails through the Dar- 
danelles, out of the narrow into the broard sea, iron 
bracelets, or rings, are immediately passed over the 

14 — 2 



212 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

hands of each captive, that they may not be able to 
resist and defend themselves against the Turks. And 
thus fettered hand and foot the captive must row day 
and night, unless there is a gale, till the skin on the 
body is scorched like that of a singed hog, and cracks 
from the heat. The sweat flows into the eyes and 
steeps the whole body, whence arises excessive agony, 
especially to silken hands unaccustomed to work, on 
which blisters are formed from the oars and yet give 
way with the oar one must; for when the superintendent 
of the boat sees any one taking breath, and resting, he 
immediately beats him, naked as he is, either with the 
usual galley-slave scourge, or with a wet rope dipped 
in the sea, till he makes abundance of bloody weals 
over his whole body. 

Frequently some jackanapes of a rascally Turkish 
boy amuses himself with beating the captives from 
bench to bench one after the other, and laughing at 
them. All this you must not only bear patiently 
from the snivelling rascal, and hold your tongue, but, 
if you can bring yourself to it, you must kiss his hand, 
or foot, and beg the dirty boy not to be angry with you. 

For food nothing is given but two small cakes of 
biscuit, but when they sail to some island where 
Christians live, you can sometimes beg, or, if you have 
money, buy yourself a little wine, and sometimes a little 
porridge, or soup. So too, when we rested one, two, 
three, or more days by the shore, we knitted gloves 
and stockings of cotton, sold them, and sometimes 
bought ourselves additional food, which we cooked our- 
selves in the vessel. Each of us had two blue shirts and 
a reddish blouse — there were no other upper clothes, 
but we only dressed ourselves in them at night. In- 



Queer Delicacies 



213 



deed, we had a most miserable, sorrowful life, and worse 
than death, in that vessel. 

Sometimes a draught of wine, which grows on the 
island Alia Marmora, where they hew marble, and is 
very good, cheered and strengthened us amidst this 
torture. We likewise enjoyed the good Wallachian 
cheese. 

Six of us who were in partnership, having sold the 
gloves and stockings which we had made, bought a 
tolerably large piece of this cheese mixed with hair, 
which certainly came to us very acceptably, and tasted 
to us then better than macaroons ; for we made soup 
of it, crumbled our mouldy biscuit into it, and eat it 
with remarkable appetite, paying no attention to and 
feeling no disgust at the circumstance that there were 
hairs in it. Ah ! how many times, and indeed times out 
of number, did I remember, how in Bohemia they made 
soup of fine and good cheese even for useless greedy 
dogs, crumble fine bread into it, and give it them to 
eat ; whereas, I, poor wretch, must thankfully receive 
such miserable hairy cheese and mouldy biscuit, and 
suffer hunger! Often did I wish, that, in point of food, 
I might be a companion to those dogs! 

Once too a Turk brought us a bag of boiled sheep's 
heads for sale and we bought the heads from him and 
thanked him besides. 

When we had already been half-a-year at the galleys, 
the Turks became fearful lest some of us should escape, 
and conducted us all back again from the galleys to our 
first prison, where they left us about a week. 

Intelligence was again brought that our men had 
gained a glorious victory over the Turks in Hungary, 
whence great sorrow and lamentation arose on all sides ; 



214 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

and the clerk of the prisoners, Alfonso di Strada, a 
Spaniard, who had gained his liberty by work and 
service, came to us early in the morning, and sorrow- 
fully informed us that the Turks were violently enraged 
with us, and in short, were on the point of putting us 
in the Black Tower. 

After dinner the pasha's kihaja ordered us to be all 
called out, and made known to us the will of his pasha, 
and also bade us take our things and follow him, saying 
that we were to sail to the Black Tower. As soon as 
we heard the Black Tower mentioned, and received 
the unhappy news that we were to be placed in so 
gloomy a prison, we all with one voice began to weep 
and lament, till our hearts were breaking. All the other 
prisoners pitied us too, and wept with us ; moreover, 
we would rather have undergone death than go to so 
unendurable a prison. Having, therefore, tied up our 
things in wallets, and each taking his own property on 
his shoulders, we mournfully bade adieu to the prisoners, 
but were unable to speak for excessive weeping. All 
who were in the prison accompanied us with tears and 
lamentations to the gate. One prisoner gave us half a 
loaf of bread as a parting gift, another some sewing 
needles, another a piece of cotton, and each what he 
had. When we came to the gate, and thus sorrowfully 
weeping, thanked the Quardian Pasha of the place for 
having been kind to us, he too wept over us with 
compassion. 

Thus we got into the boat, not with tears, but with 
great moaning. When we drew near the fortress where 
the Black Tower is, the Turks pointed it out to us, 
comforting us and bidding us have hope in God, saying 
that He was mighty and could release us from it, as 




PQ 



' 'A bandon Hope, . . " 215 



indeed half-a-year before the prisoners had got out of 
it ; but we could neither speak nor look for weeping 
and anguish, and it is wonderful where so many tears 
stow themselves away in the eyes. 

As soon as we ran ashore under the fortress itself 
a ladder was let down to us, up which, each carrying 
his wallet on his shoulders, we walked into the fortress 
after our reis, or captain. On approaching the great 
iron gates, which were opened to us, we saw a square 
with a gallery round it reaching to the tower itself, 
which was entered by an iron door. The captain of 
our boat handed to Mehemet, the aga, or governor, of 
the Black Tower, a letter from the chief pasha, on 
perusing which the aga said with a loud voice: — "What 
am I to do with these poor prisoners ? They have not 
deserved so severe a prison. Is there no less severe 
prison to be found for them ? It is not just to punish 
guiltless people thus." And looking at us, for we were 
all weeping from the bottom of our hearts, and had 
our eyes bloodshot from weeping, he said : — " Allah 
Buickter, kurtulur Siue ! " i.e. " Fear not, God is a 
mighty liberator 1 ." He then ordered that terrible door 
to be opened, and bade us go into the tower. 

The tower is very lofty, but not very wide, so that 
two-and-twenty of us and the first four, that is, six-and- 
twenty persons, could scarcely lie down alongside of 
each other ; and, indeed, could not help touching each 
other. Inside the tower is a thick oaken lattice, like a 
cage in which lions are kept, so conveniently con- 
structed that the guards can walk inside round the 
lattice within which the prisoners sit, and see what they 

1 The aghds words were probably "Allah buyuk dir qurtarir sizi? 
i.e. " God is great. He will deliver you." 



216 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

are doing. In the middle of this cage burns, day and 
night, a glass lamp, and round are stumps, or blocks, 
on which we supported our feet. We were, indeed, to 
have had our feet fastened in these blocks, but, as it 
pleased God to grant us to find favour in the eyes of 
the governor, he did not put us into the blocks, except 
when Turks whom he did not know were to come to 
the tower, when he sent guards in first with orders 
to put both our feet into the blocks and fasten us in. 
On the departure of the Turks he used to order us to 
be let out again. 

This governor had been a Christian child, born 
in Croatia, and was then more than ninety years old ; 
zealous in his religion, and compassionate towards us, 
but careful in his duties. He looked to the guards 
himself, came frequently into the tower, and had the 
fetters examined every day. Every week the guards 
examined all our clothes over the whole body, to see 
whether they could find a knife or file on any one, and, 
taking warning from the aga who had been hung, he 
did not allow his diligence to relax in the least. 

When the third day came, and neither bread nor 
other food was given us, we sent for our aga, and asked 
what they wanted to do with us. And it being a T jady 
the third day since we had had anything in our t'iroats, 
if they wanted to kill us with hunger, we bade them 
throw us into the sea and drown us, that we might, at 
any rate, be quit of our misery. When we wept before 
him, he had such compassion on us that tears fell from 
his eyes, and he said to us : — " As God lives, and his 
great prophet Mahomet, I do not wish you so grievous 
and gloomy a prison ; and I cannot wonder sufficiently 
why they imprison you, and give no orders what is to 



Life in the Tower 



217 



be done with you further. I do not think that they are 
going to kill you with hunger, for surely they would 
not have put you among the other prisoners ; but you 
would have been put into a vault, where they kill the 
other Turks with hunger. Therefore, I will go im- 
mediately to Constantinople, and ascertain, and inform 
you directly, what is to happen with you further." All 
of us then kissed his hand, his clothes, and his feet, 
recommended ourselves to his care with tears, and 
waited in great terror for his arrival. 

Returning before evening from Constantinople, he 
comforted us by telling us that they were not going to 
kill us, and declared that he had obtained orders to the 
effect that three aspers, or kreutzers, a-day should be 
given to us to live upon by the pasha, adding also as 
follows : — " Since ye still have to wait long for the 
payment, for the wages of court officials and soldiers 
are paid quarterly, and your pensions will be paid then, 
I must, therefore, provide you with means of support 
in the interval." And these he provided as follows. 
Knowing we could not wait for the money, like a good 
man, he made himself our surety to the bakers in the 
town by the Black Tower, arranging that they should 
give each of us two loaves of bread daily, and he would 
pay them the money every quarter. He also kept his 
promise, for at the conclusion of the quarter he paid 
the bakers, and kept for himself the third kreutzer per 
diem for his trouble, though certainly he said that they 
refused to give us more than two aspers, a sum which 
we were obliged to receive thankfully. And since the 
salt sea-water could not be drunk, they brought good 
water from a spring on a hill some hours from the town, 
and gave us two pitchers of it daily, so that, hot as it 



218 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

was in our prison, we could scarcely quench our thirst, 
and often quarrelled together for the water, when one 
drank more of it than another. Therefore, that there 
might be equality amongst us, we took up the stocking 
trade, and made partnerships of five or six persons in 
each — one spinning the cotton, another winding it 
together, a third knitting, and so forth. When we had 
earned some money by selling what we had knit (for 
sometimes they sent us for it meal, oil, bread, vinegar, 
and even some aspers), we all clubbed together and 
bought as many mugs as there were persons, and also a 
large wooden tub, in which we set our mugs, and when 
the water was brought we filled them one after the other, 
till we had all had our turn ; but when there was any 
water remaining in the tub each took it for a day in turn, 
and kept it for himself in a large pitcher. 

We bought ourselves, moreover, a large pot, and 
plastered it with clay, which our guards brought us, 
and made a kind of oven of it. We also bought coals 
and a bag with the proceeds of our knitting, and being 
already in partnership by fives and sixes, and having 
saved several pitchers of water, each had to boil and 
act in turn as cook for a week ; that is to say, taking a 
small loaf and two or three pieces of bread he crumbled 
them into the water, got up the fire, boiled the porridge, 
and gave it to his fellow-craftsmen to eat. The porridge 
was extremely nice, especially when at times we pro- 
cured some olive oil, made it rich for ourselves, and 
licked our fingers afterwards. 

When we had got used to the frightful darkness, 
and had formed this arrangement together, we obtained 
some Latin and German books, that is to say, the 
Bible, poems, and legends ; and whenever our guards 



A Cruel Joke 219 



were changed we concluded that it was day, and all 
sang a morning hymn, and read a legend, praying to 
the Lord God for our release, and for the victory of 
the Christians over the Turks ; after which each turned 
to his work and worked all day. In the evening, when 
they had examined our fetters, we again sang an 
evening hymn, and, after performing our devotions, 
concluded that it was night, and betook ourselves to 
repose, or read a brief hour by the light of the lamp. 
It was, indeed a great comfort that we obtained those 
books, and read to each other. The Turks certainly 
laughed at our singing and praying, but they offered 
us no hindrance therein, and when the time of their 
own devotions came they observed it also. 

When we had been more than four quarters of a 
year in this Black Tower, with only one shirt and one 
rug a-piece, the violent frosts and cold wet west-winds 
tormented us in winter, just as much as the great heat 
had done in summer, and therefore our aga made us 
each a coat of cloth, in which we clad ourselves and 
kept out the cold. 

Being all emaciated with hunger, our guards begged 
for us, from the fishermen, a large fish, just like a 
round table, and with a long tail, which the Turks call 
a kedy baluk, or cat-fish. This fish is not eaten, but 
its fat, for it is very fat, is melted down. Our guards 
begged this fish, which had been caught in the sea, from 
the fishermen, and when they gave it us we received it 
with great gratitude, and asked them to cut it in pieces 
for us. When they had done as we wished, we were off 
with several pieces immediately to the pot, boiled some, 
baked the rest, and breakfasted off it with remarkably 
good appetites, though afterwards we paid for it bitterly. 



220 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

For we ate this fish's fat, and drank water after it, till 
our stomachs and bellies swelled, so that for many- 
weeks we did not rise from our places. We informed 
our aga that we were seriously ill and that death awaited 
us. He came amongst us and, seeing our condition, 
vehemently reproached the Turks and threatened to 
punish them for poisoning us ; he also strictly forbad 
anything to be given us without his knowledge. They, 
nevertheless, gave us snails and tortoises, which we 
boiled and ate with a good appetite. Neither did they 
do us any harm, for we had fortified our stomachs with 
hunger, and digested everything well, with the ex- 
ception of that nasty cat-fish.' 

At this stage of Wratislaw's imprisonment important 
outside events took place which reacted strongly on 
his fortunes, but which for our present purpose may be 
very briefly summarised as follows. In the first place 
the Turks won a notable success by capturing the town 
of Raab (half-way between Buda-Pesth and Vienna) 
from the Emperor. Almost immediately afterwards 
the Sultan died and was succeeded by Mohammed III. 
Sinan Pasha having won great kudos by the victory 
at Raab retained the Grand Vizirate under the new 
Sultan, and at once began preparations for another 
campaign, which was to prove disastrous to Turkey 
owing to the revolt of the subject principalities of 
Moldavia and Wallachia (the modern Rumania) and 
Transylvania. In his absence a certain Ibrahim acted 
as his Kaimmakam, or deputy, at Constantinople. 

After this necessary parenthesis, the story shall be 
resumed as Wratislaw himself tells it. 



CHAPTER XVI 



A PRISONER IN THE GALLEYS AND 
THE BLACK TOWER. 

(2) 

' On one occasion Ibrahim invited the Sultan to his 
gardens, on learning which our aga came to us, shouting : 
"Good news, Christians! good news! The most mighty 
Sultan makes an excursion tomorrow to Ibrahim's gar- 
dens. Therefore when a cannon is fired on the tower, 
shout with all the voice you have, and wish the Emperor 
prosperity and victory over his enemies." 

In the morning the Sultan issued magnificently from 
his palace and sailed along the shore past the tower 
where we were in a boat gilded all over, as our guards 
told us. When he passed the tower the Turks fired 
heavy artillery. As soon as they ceased firing, we all 
called out and shouted with a loud voice, wishing him 
prosperity, our guards also assisting us in so doing. 
The Emperor heard the noise, but could not understand 
anything. When the Emperor sailed gently on, and 
the shouting increased more and more the farther he 
went, he asked what the noise was, and whence it came. 
Then the Lord God raised up a friend for us, Bostangi 
Pasha, the grand superintendent of the gardens, who 
stood behind the Emperor, and commanded the guard 
in the stern of the boat, and he said to the Emperor : 
" This voice, most gracious Emperor, is that of poor 
prisoners, who have now been long in yon tower, and 



222 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

see not the light of the sun ; they are calling and beg- 
ging for mercy." The Emperor stopped, and asked 
what manner of prisoners they were. Information was 
given him that they were the servants of the ambassador 
of the Viennese king, who had been sent to his father, 
Sultan Amurath, with the annual gift and handsome 
presents, and that their lord had been a traitor, and 
had written down all manner of intelligence for his king ; 
also that Synan Pasha had commanded him to be put 
to death in prison, and his suite to be placed in that 
tower, and that, though guiltless, they had already been 
three years imprisoned in irons. 

Upon this the Emperor said : " Since they are guilt- 
less prisoners, and have never drawn the sword against 
us, it is not a proper thing to afflict them by imprison- 
ment ; therefore, I command that they be released." 
He then went on his way. Then the kind Turks and 
guards who heard this ran tumbling over each other to 
us, hoping to receive presents for telling us some very 
good news. And when we promised them, they informed 
us that their Emperor had given orders to set us at 
liberty. Then, being filled with boundless joy, we dis- 
tributed to them everything that we had, rugs, clothes, 
and spirits, and kissed and embraced each other, not 
imagining but that we should be set free in the morning. 
But we were shamefully deceived. For there in heathen- 
dom, just as with us Christians, when the Emperor 
makes any promise to any one, if that person has not 
a good friend at court, and if he makes no presents, his 
just matter is often left in the lurch. Thus it happened 
to us poor wretches. For having given away everything 
that we possessed, we had afterwards to suffer hunger 
and all manner of want ; and whereas we might have 



Hope Deferred 223 



lain on the rugs, we were obliged to be satisfied with 
the bare ground. 

News now arrived that Synan Pasha had returned 
to Constantinople and having appeased the Emperor 
for the losses of his army was received into high favour. 
After this our allowance of two aspers each was not 
paid for a whole quarter, and our aga went to court and 
mentioned us to the vizier, who answered angrily that 
he would have us flayed alive, and our skins made into 
drums. This was told us sorrowfully by the aga, who 
bade us entreat God that the vizier's anger might be 
appeased. 

Presently our men and the Transylvanians took 
some fortresses from the Turks and slew a good many. 
Whereupon the Turks immediately prepared for war 
and Synan was proclaimed commander-in-chief. Since 
he had been so unfortunate in the previous year he 
used every exertion to prevail upon the Sultan to march 
into Hungary in person, and when through his and the 
soldiers' urgency the Emperor was inclined to go, he 
had all manner of military engines prepared, everything 
requisite for an imperial campaign got ready and the 
soldiers mustered. But through his great exertions a 
dysentery suddenly attacked him and he died. 

At that time very cold and disagreeable north winds 
began to blow and many of us fell very sick, so that 
we longed to die being utterly enfeebled by hunger and 
tortured by the intolerable darkness, for we had no hope 
of getting out of the tower unless peace were made 
between our Emperor and the Sultan. 

While we were thus mournfully lamenting and sing- 
ing sad songs, and had lost all hope of quitting the 
tower till death, in comes our aga amongst us, with a 



224 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

cheerful countenance, bidding us give him a reward, 
because he was about to tell us good news. Waking 
up, as it were from sleep, we all crowded round him, 
like chickens round a hen, beseeching him to tell us 
the good news, kissing his feet, hands, and clothes. Not 
having the heart to refuse our request, he informed us 
that Ibrahim Pasha was chosen grand vizier, and gave 
us good hope of our release. On hearing this, without 
having had any expectation of it, we raised our hands 
and thanked God heartily, and asked the aga to advise 
us what we should do, for we scarce knew what to do 
for joy. For in truth, if a man has not experienced 
misery, want, hunger, cold, heat, and grievous imprison- 
ment, he cannot possibly believe one who has been in 
such a condition. He advised us to send a petition to 
the pasha, and wish him prosperity in his new office, 
long life, and victory over his enemies, promising to 
deliver the petition to the pasha and to intercede for 
us. In return for this we kissed his hands and feet for 
joy, and promised to give him much more ; and having 
given the writing to a Turkish priest to copy out, we 
sent it to the aga to look over, committing ourselves 
to the Lord God and to him. He got into his caique, 
or six-oared boat, and going to Constantinople, first 
wished Ibrahim joy of his new office, and then delivered 
the writing from us. 

The pasha received our letter and said : " Dear aga, 
thou perceivest and knowest how great a burden is 
placed upon me, so that I have more cares than hairs 
in my beard. Therefore, it is impossible to attend to 
them before I set more important matters in order. 
Remind me in about two or three weeks' time, and 
conduct them to the divan (the national council) and 



A Joyful Announcement 225 

I will use every means that they may be freed from 
this imprisonment." When the aga made this known 
to us we were filled with great joy, and waited anxiously 
for the time to come. 

When the longed-for time came, the aga gave orders 
for us all to be let out of the tower, and the fetters to 
be taken off one foot. These we tied to our girdles, 
that we might carry them the more easily. On coming 
into the open air we were refreshed, as if born anew ; 
yet we could not look at the sun, but, on coming sud- 
denly out of such great darkness into the light, tears 
streamed from our eyes, till they became accustomed 
to it again. Meanwhile the aga ordered the caique to 
be prepared for us to sail to Constantinople ; and on 
looking over us, and seeing me, the youngest of all, 
with long hair and no beard, pale and emaciated, he said 
that I should stay there below with the guards and walk 
about, till he returned with my comrades, otherwise, on 
account of my youth, I might easily be seized by some 
pasha and forced to turn Mahometan. 

Wishing with my whole heart to make the excursions 
and see Constantinople, I kissed the aga's hand, and 
besought him, for God's sake, to take me also with him. 
He said to me: "If thou wilt have it so, thou shalt 
come with us ; but I do not promise thee that thou wilt 
return." Thus we got into the boat and sailed to Con- 
stantinople, landed from the boat, and went into the 
city, where a great concourse of the Turkish mob sur- 
rounded us, asking who and whence we were ? But 
our aga answered them himself, and forbad us to say a 
word. H aving very long hair flowing over my shoulders, 
and being beardless, I was the most tormented ; for 
one pulled me by the hair, another stared in my face, 



226 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

a third talked to me, and asked me who I was ; but the 
aga seeing this, and fearing for me, did not venture to 
take me into the divan : but going to the church of 
St Sophia, left me there with two Turks, under a pro- 
jection of the roof, where some lime was lying, and 
ordered me to sit down on the ground, that the Turks 
going that way might not see me. 

When my companions entered the divan, all the 
pashas present arose, went to the Sultan, and made 
intercession that we might be released from prison, 
saying that peace would be made between the Emperors 
so much the sooner. But orders were given to our aga 
to place us again in the tower, and bring me also, if I 
were still alive, to the divan in a fortnight. The prisoners, 
my comrades, thanked the pashas, and returned towards 
the Black Tower, past the church of St Sophia, where 
I sat in the lime-vault. I crawled out of the lime-vault 
and joined them with my two guards, and we went to 
the tower, and anxiously waited for the last day of the 
fortnight. 

After a fortnight we all sailed again to Constanti- 
nople with one fetter. On going into the divan we were 
informed, through an interpreter, that the mighty Sultan, 
out of his natural goodness, released us all from so 
grievous an imprisonment, and counselled us to show 
gratitude in return, and never to wage war against him ; 
otherwise, if any of us were seized and captured in war, 
he would be immediately impaled. Likewise, when we 
returned to our own country, he bade us, with the aid 
of our friends, bring it to pass that our king should seek 
peace from the mighty Sultan, and that the prisoners 
on both sides should be released. Upon this they in- 
scribed us by name in the record books, and all of us, 



Friends in Need 



227 



falling at the feet of the pashas, wished to kiss them, 
which, however, they did not permit, and, thanking 
them for their great kindness, promised that none of us 
(knowing their great power and might) would serve in 
war to the day of our death ; but that, as soon as we 
arrived in Christendom, we would in every wise counsel 
our Emperor and our friends to humble themselves to 
the Sultan, and seek peace from him, and that we knew 
that negotiations for peace would be begun as soon as 
we informed them of such enormous preparations. 

There were also there present the ambassadors of 
the King of France and the Queen of England, who 
were to follow the Turkish army to the city of Erlau, 
and to whom several camels and horses had been as- 
signed, and also a chiaous appointed, with twenty janis- 
saries, to protect them and prevent the Turkish multitude 
from injuring them in aught. These ambassadors be- 
friended us, and entreated that we might be freed from 
prison immediately, and sent to Christendom by sea, 
by way of Venice. That request being made, the am- 
bassadors and we were commanded to leave the council, 
and, after a short time, the pashas summoned the English 
ambassador, and bade him, whenever he should follow 
the Sultan, to take us under his protection, and provide 
for us, as far as Greek Belgrade. They then assigned 
us thirty-five camels and four carriages, to put our bag- 
gage on, and also ride on ourselves ; and also promised 
to give us five tents and six janissaries for our safety, 
and meanwhile commanded us to depart to the tower, 
take our necessaries {i.e. our rags), and wait upon the 
English ambassador. 

Some days later we were released by the gipsy 
smiths from our irons and fetters, and could not sleep 

15—2 



228 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

all night long for joy, but tied our rags together, dis- 
tributed something to the poor prisoners who remained 
there after us, and bade adieu to them ; for the poor 
fellows wept bitterly, knowing that they were to remain 
still longer in that miserable prison, and must almost 
despair of their freedom. 

These miserable prisoners begged us, if we reached 
Christendom, to entreat our Emperor on their behalf, 
that they might be freed from that cruel tower by the 
exchange of other Turks for them. This we promised 
to do. 

Next day we bade adieu to them with great weeping, 
and quitted, on the festival of St Peter and St Paul, 
that most gloomy Black Tower, in which we had been 
shut up two years and five weeks without intermission, 
and going to the aga, thanked him and the rest of the 
guards for the kindness and favour that they had shown us, 
and promised (and also afterwards fulfilled our promise) 
to send them handsome knives, and the aga a striking- 
clock. The aga then had us conducted to the English 
ambassador at Galata, who received us in a friendly 
manner, and ordered a bath to be prepared for us, that 
we might be cleansed from the filthy condition in which 
we were. After the bath we visited the Catholic churches, 
of which there are seven in Galata, and gave thanks to 
the Lord God for our deliverance, from so exceeding 
cruel an imprisonment, fervently beseeching Him to 
be our Guide and Gracious Protector to our own dear 
country. 

About that time Sultan Mehemet marched with 
great pomp from Constantinople, with all his court and 
his principal warriors, and having had tents pitched 
before the city, rested there several days according to 



With the Army on the March 229 

custom, waiting for more soldiers. For several pashas 
from Egypt, Palestine, Cairo, and other lands beyond 
sea, were still marching up with their armies, and they 
were waiting for them. 

When the Sultan had marched with the main army, 
the beglerbeg of the land of Greece pitched his tent 
with the rest of the army, about 80,000 strong, in the 
same place where the Emperor had previously been, 
and rested there two days. The English ambassador 
stayed with us, two days at Galata, and on the third 
day we marched in good order with these 80,000, always 
pitching our tents where the Emperor had rested for 
the night. When we arrived at Greek Belgrade, the 
whole army was concentrated together. 

The Emperor would not lodge in the castle, but lay 
in the open country ; and some thousand Tatars also 
joined him, who day and night were burning the vil- 
lages of Christians living under the protection of the 
Turks, and driving herds of cattle, and droves of un- 
broken mares into the camp. These Tatars obtained 
such an abundance of cattle that they sold two Hungarian 
oxen for a dollar, more or less, and cows for twenty or 
thirty aspers the pair. We, too, bought a calf from 
under a cow for eight aspers, and eat meat to our 
heart's content. 

Meanwhile the English ambassador made applica- 
tion to Ibrahim Pasha to send us to Buda and set us 
at liberty, because he wished to write to our Emperor 
about making peace. He also procured us access to 
him and the aga in command of the janissaries, and 
when we were admitted into his presence in his tent, 
we kissed his feet, and besought him to set us free 
before the mighty Sultan marched to Erlau, because 



230 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

eventually, our Emperor, owing to us, would send off 
commissioners to humble themselves to the Sultan in 
his stead, and sue for peace. He replied that we should 
be set free but that we were to remember the kindnesses 
shown us, noise their great forces abroad everywhere, 
and induce the Christians to make peace before they 
arrived at Erlau. And if our Emperor wished to send 
any of us to the Turkish emperor to negotiate such a 
peace, we were not to fear aught, but boldly and willingly 
to make ourselves useful in the matter, he swearing by 
the beard of the Sultan, his lord, that no harm should 
happen to us, but that we should be presented with 
distinguished gifts, handsome clothes and horses, and 
dismissed in safety to our own country. 

When we had promised all this and much more, a 
letter credential and emancipatory was given us, and 
also one to the pasha at Buda (five of our party having 
been in a tower there ever since the death of my lord 
the resident), to the effect that he was to release them 
from prison, and entrust us to boatmen, to go to a 
fortress of our own up the Danube. In return for this 
kindness we all fell at his feet and thanked him. It was 
our great good fortune, that we received the letter to 
the pasha at Buda, and the letter credential that day, 
for, had it not happened so, we should certainly have 
all been cut in pieces, as will soon be related. 

When we arrived at Zolnak we heard news that our 
people had taken the fortress of Hatwan from the Turks, 
and that the Walloons had behaved like dogs, not like 
Christians, to the Turks torturing them and killing their 
wives and children so that it was grievous to hear the 
lamentations of the Turks, who affirmed that it was the 
Germans who had exercised such cruelty. In this ill- 



A Serious Hitch 



231 



humour they cut their lately-captured prisoners in pieces 
and wished to sabre even the Christian ambassadors, 
and more especially us prisoners, and would have carried 
this into execution had it not been, firstly, for the Divine 
protection, and secondly, for Ibrahim Pasha and the 
aga in command of the janissaries, who immediately 
surrounded the whole place where the Christian am- 
bassadors were living with us with a strong guard of 
janissaries, and allowed no one to have access to us. 
Orders were then given to us not to show ourselves to 
any one, but to remain in our tent, and not to quit it 
under pain of death. 

As the Turks remained three days at Zolnak for 
sorrow and never moved, our ambassador kept con- 
stantly applying to the pasha, through his chiaous, that, 
according to his promise, fifty hussars, or Turkish archers, 
should be assigned us, to escort us as far as Buda. But 
the pasha was vehemently enraged, and threatened to 
have us all put to the sword, asking whether it was in 
return for this that he was to set us at liberty, because 
our fathers, uncles, and brothers, had behaved so dis- 
honourably to their dear friends the Turks at Hatwan? 
Therefore, he bade him leave him quiet in the matter, 
and not press him, if he did not wish to meet with some- 
thing worse himself. 

When the English ambassador sorrowfully made 
known this sad intelligence to us, and said that we were 
in danger of our lives, we were greatly terrified and 
cast down. He also counselled us to pray fervently to 
the Lord God, that, since it had pleased him to free us 
from so grievous a prison, it might please Him to be 
our God still further, and grant us a happy return to 
our own dear country. And as he understood, that, as 



232 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

soon as the camp moved, we might have some difficulty, 
and might even perhaps be put to the sword, he cared 
for us faithfully, hired four peasant carts to go to Buda, 
gave us 100 ducats for the journey, assigned us his own 
interpreter, and a janissary to guard us, and counselled 
us in God's name, as soon as the Emperor marched 
towards Erlau, to turn by another way towards Buda, 
since we already had our credentials and the letter to 
the Pasha of Buda. 

As we were obliged to travel that night by a most 
dangerous road, where day and night the Turks and 
Tatars and our hussars were skirmishing — and, in fact, 
they brought into the camp daily captured heyduks of 
ours, and wounded hussars, and also multitudes of 
Christians' heads — we were constrained to swear to the 
janissary that, if Christians came upon us, no harm 
should happen to him, and he, on his part, promised in 
return that, if Turks came upon us, we should travel 
on in safety, since we had the Turkish emperor's pass- 
port; but he acknowledged that he could not make any 
promise for the Tatars if we fell into their hands, but 
said that he should be cut in pieces with us himself, 
for the Tatars did not even spare a Turk, but when 
they fall upon them by tens or twenties, and are more 
than a match for them, they sabre them, and plunder 
them of everything, without paying the least regard to 
any orders. For this reason we took a guide with us, 
and, after bidding adieu to the ambassador of the 
English queen, and thanking him for his great kind- 
ness, as soon as the Sultan moved from Zolnak towards 
Erlau we turned, with great terror, towards Buda, in 
the name of God. 

As we went on our way we kept continually looking 



An Unlucky Encounter 233 

back, with a timid and terrified heart, to see whether 
they were pursuing us, and were in constant expectation 
of being cut to pieces, since we were obliged to travel 
through the most dangerous localities, where Turks, 
Tatars, and Christians were skirmishing, it being impos- 
sible, as our guide informed us, to go by any other road. 
Nevertheless it pleased a merciful God so to order it 
that during the whole day, from morning dawn to 
evening twilight, we never met a single human being ; 
only on arriving, when it was almost twilight, at a large 
Hungarian village, we saw about a hundred Tatars 
moving about the vineyards. Filled with terror, we 
hastened to the village, which was entirely surrounded 
by a moat, and besought the inhabitants to protect us 
against the Tatars and admit us into the village, which 
they did. The poor peasants threw a little bridge over 
the moat, bade us sorrowfully welcome, and informed 
us what excessive ill-treatment they were compelled 
to endure from the Tatars, about 500 of whom were 
encamped in the village. They, therefore, counselled 
us to go without delay to the vicarage, and conceal our- 
selves somewhere, that the Tatars might not see us. 
We listened to their advice, went to the vicar, and 
begged him to open the church to us. He kindly gave 
us cheese and slices of bread, and admitted us into the 
church, where, with a contrite heart, we besought God 
for mercy and protection against the Tatars. Not 
knowing what plan to adopt, we also hoped in the 
janissary, and trusted that our Turkish passport would 
be available for us. But the janissary was as much 
afraid of the Tatars as ourselves, and consequently 
turned quite pale, and forbad us to speak to him in 
Turkish. 

i5-5 



234 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

Meanwhile the Tatars lighted large fires in the 
village, roasted oxen and sheep whole, cut off the 
cooked flesh, and ate like dogs. When we quitted the 
church, and began to feed our horses, the Tatars got 
intelligence of us, and immediately crowded to us, to 
the number of about 200, and, surrounding us, asked 
us who and what we were. We and the janissary made 
them a low Turkish obeisance, answered that we were 
going to Buda by order of the Sultan, and exhibited 
the Sultan's letters. But they replied, contemptuously, 
that it would be an improper thing to let us go, and 
sent for their captain, and the good God knows what 
they intended to do with us. Perceiving that it would 
not go well with us, and that we should either be made 
prisoners, or put to the sword by them, we prayed 
very penitently in heart, and besought God that it 
might please Him to be our protector, which, in fact, 
came to pass at sunset. 

Wonder of wonders, and mighty power of God! 
Although the whole of that day had been very bright, 
the sun shining beautifully throughout, and not the 
least vapour or cloud had been visible, it nevertheless 
pleased a most merciful God, who never forsaketh them 
that trust in Him, to raise an exceedingly violent wind, 
and after it a tempest, so that it did not rain but pour, 
and a water-spout must have burst. The whole village 
and the trenches were filled with water, and the Tatars 
returned to their horses, the tempest having extin- 
guished all their fires. During this violent tempest we 
harnessed our horses to the carriages, by the advice of 
the poor peasants, and quitted the village, taking with 
us a peasant to guide us by a route different from that 
which we had intended to pursue, as there were Tatars 



Arrival at Buda 



235 



encamped in all the surrounding villages. This violent 
rain lasted without intermission till midnight, and 
during it we nevertheless travelled onwards, though 
we were obliged to pull the horses and carriages out of 
quagmires and help them forwards. We also travelled 
through a great number of burnt and forsaken villages, 
and heard the crying, weeping, and wailing of the poor 
people, and the lowing of the captured cattle. How- 
ever, we made our way gradually onwards, for God 
strengthened our horses and ourselves, and arrived, 
about three hours before daybreak, at a heath, where 
we gave our horses hay and rested ourselves. But as 
soon as the horses had eaten a little we commenced 
our journey. 

When day had fully dawned we heard loud salvos 
of artillery from Buda, which, at so great a distance, 
was surprising to us. It again occurred that no one met 
us on our journey till it was just noon, when we saw a 
large number of cavalry riding towards us on the plain. 
When they approached us we found that it was an 
exceedingly fine body of about 10,000 cavalry, with 
which the Pasha of Bosnia was on his way to reinforce 
the Sultan at Erlau. They all had long lances and 
various-coloured pennons upon them. As soon as they 
espied us about a hundred of them darted forwards, 
and rode at full gallop towards us with their lances in 
the rest. 

As soon as our janissary knew that they were Turks, 
he dismounted, saluted them, and informed them who 
we were and whither he was conducting us. Our inter- 
preter also rode with him to the pasha, showed him 
our letters, and informed him that the Sultan was 
already moving towards Erlau with his whole army. 



236 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

He then returned to us again. When the pasha's army 
had passed us, we made for Pesth, and arrived at the 
city about an hour before sunset. 

In the morning when the pasha of Pesth returned 
the Sultan's letter was delivered to him by us, in which 
orders were given him to escort us to the nearest 
Christian fortress, and set at liberty our five comrades, 
who had been in prison at Buda ever since the death 
of our ambassador. The pasha read the letter through, 
and not only immediately set our comrades at liberty, 
but also gave us plenty to eat and drink, and ordered 
boatmen to take us up stream to the fortress of 
Towaschow. 

The next day, early in the morning, we sent the 
peasants, with the carriages and some of our things, 
forwards to Towaschow, requesting them to inform the 
Christian soldiers there of our liberation and arrival, 
and intending to recompense them there for the use of 
the carriages. But the poor fellows fell in with some 
Tatars and were put to the sword by them. We then 
got into a boat, and were pulled up stream, while 
our janissary and dragoman, or interpreter, rode on 
horseback along the bank. When we got close to 
Towaschow, we saw the bastions full of German soldiers, 
and imagined that our peasants had already made known 
our approach in the fortress. Such, however, was not 
the case. For a few days before some Turks, disguised 
in women's clothes, had sailed in a boat to the very 
skirts of the fortress, had seized and bound two fisher- 
men and a woman, and had carried them off to Buda. 
Thus the people at Towaschow imagined that some 
more Turks were coming on a plundering expedition, 
and had disguised themselves like captives, in order 



A too Warm Welcome 237 



the more easily to delude the Christians. Moreover, 
seeing the janissary and dragoman on the other bank 
of the Danube, they determined to allow us to approach 
the fortress within point-blank range of their cannon. 
Being then so close to the fortress, and not knowing 
what to do for joy, we began to embrace and kiss each 
other. At this moment our friends fired two pieces, 
one at the janissary, and the other at our boat, so that 
the water splashed over us, the artilleryman having 
fired a little too low. The boatmen, therefore, saw their 
danger, and wanted to let us fall again down stream. 
We prevented them from doing this, took the oars out 
of their hands, and raising a hat on the point of a spear, 
called out with a loud voice that we were Christians. 
The commander, Rosenhahn, a German by birth, saw 
this, and stepping up to the artilleryman, forbad him 
to fire any more, otherwise he would have shot our 
boat through with a second discharge, and we must 
have been drowned. In fact, I afterwards ascertained 
myself that he had taken better aim than the first time, 
and would certainly not have missed us. 

Terrified as we were, we, nevertheless, approached 
the fortress, and calling out in German and Hungarian, 
made known who we were. Then there came to meet 
us a couple of boats, with two guns each, which first 
made a circuit round us, that we might not escape, and 
occupied the Danube behind us. They then rowed 
straight up to us, with their firearms cocked, and asked 
who we were. Upon our briefly informing them, they 
immediately lashed our boat to theirs, and pulled to the 
front of the fortress, where we got out, and all kneeling 
down, thanked God with heartfelt tears for our deliver- 
ance from so grievous an imprisonment. 



238 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

In the morning we went in a boat to Gran where 
we begged to be conveyed to Vienna. 

We arrived at Vienna, which was then under his 
grace the Archduke Maximilian, and were permitted 
to have an audience. We kissed his hand, and after 
giving him certain information about the Sultan's march, 
and the strength of his army, petitioned for pecuniary 
assistance to enable us to travel to Prague. We obtained 
our request, and he not only gave us money for the 
journey, but also ordered us to be conveyed to Prague 
to his brother, his Imperial Majesty Rudolph the 
Second. 

When we arrived at Prague, and met our friends, 
O! it is impossible to describe the joy! His Majesty 
the Emperor, hearing of us, was graciously pleased to 
summon us to his presence. We kissed his hand and 
related how much we had had to endure in his service 
for all Christendom, and humbly entreated him to be 
our gracious emperor, king, and lord, and to be pleased 
to grant us some acceptable recompence for it. His 
majesty looked kindly upon us all, and said, in 
German, — " Wir wollen thun!" " We will do so!" It 
was then his pleasure to leave us ; and, although orders 
were certainly given by him that a considerable sum 
of money should be divided amongst us, yet God knows 
in whose hands it remained; for 100, and 150 dollars, 
more or less, were given to some of us, who were 
foreigners, to enable them to reach their homes ; where- 
as, after much entreaty, and many applications, nothing 
was given to us Bohemians, but merely the offer made 
that, if we liked to take service in the Emperor's court, 
we should take precedence of others. But we com- 
mitted all to God, and preferred to return without 



The Prisoners" Saviour 



239 



money to our parents, friends, and acquaintances, who 
received us, as everybody can judge, with exceeding 
joy of heart. Thus, every one of us may, and ought to 
rejoice at this, and thank God, the best of comforters 
and succourers in sorrow, with heart and lips, to the 
day of his death. For, when all hope failed, all succour 
came to nought, and it seemed impossible to all men, 
both Turks and Christians, that we should return to 
our own country out of a prison so grievous, and, in all 
human judgment, so beyond the possibility of libera- 
tion, He set us at liberty by His mighty hand, to Whom, 
One true and living God in Trinity, be ascribed, honour, 
glory, and praise for ever and ever ! ' 

The deliverance of Wratislaw and his companions 
was ultimately brought about, as we have seen, by the 
intervention of the English and French envoys, and 
their actual escape from Turkey was entirely due to 
the efforts of our own ambassador. However natural 
it may seem at the present day for a foreign ambassador 
to do all in his power for subjects of another Christian 
Power reduced to such a plight, one has only to re- 
member how different the conditions were in the last 
decade of the sixteenth century to experience a real 
feeling of pride in our fellow-countryman's behaviour. 
The prisoners had failed in their appeal to their com- 
patriots in Pera, whose refusal to advance even the 
sum needed to redeem the poor wretches from their 
vile durance in the Black Tower is an eloquent com- 
mentary on the existing standards of humanity. The 
English ambassador, meanwhile, was not only alien to 
the prisoners by birth and language, but — a greater 
bar still in those days of religious intolerance — he pro- 
fessed a different faith. In spite of this, and careless of 



240 Prisoner in the Galleys cmd Black Tower 

the personal risk in befriending the subjects of a nation 
at war with Turkey, he first of all cajoled the Grand 
Vizir into letting the prisoners separate from the army 
and, when they started on their solitary journey, pro- 
vided them with every material assistance in his power. 
If only on account of his great-hearted action on this 
occasion, he deserves a special mention in these pages. 

Sir Edward Barton was, technically at least, the 
first ambassador from England to the Porte. William 
Harebone — whose voyage to Turkey in " The Great 
Susan" in 1582 is recounted in Hakluyt — had, indeed, 
preceded him as Queen Elizabeth's Agent at the 
Sultan's court, but it was Barton who first received the 
ambassadorial title after having already spent some 
half-a-dozen years at Constantinople. During those 
years, Murad IV had died, and had been succeeded, as 
already related, by Sultan Mohammed, who inaugurated 
his reign by killing off his nineteen brothers in one fell 
swoop, a " record " even in the bloody annals of the 
royal house. He displayed a paradoxical leniency to- 
wards slaves and Christian prisoners, one of his first 
sovereign acts being to emancipate the whole crew of 
the galley which brought him to the capital. Towards 
Sir Edward Barton he showed a good deal of kindness. 
He required him, however, to go with him on his 
military campaigns, and in one of his letters to the 
Queen of England he mentions that her " well-beloved 
ambassador " having been bidden by himself to follow 
the imperial camp, there not being time enough to ob- 
tain sanction from his royal mistress, had rendered 
services in the campaign which caused him (the Sultan) 
the greatest satisfaction. The strain of the frequent 
marches under war conditions finally broke Barton's 



Faith among Prisoners 



241 



I health and, on his return from the campaign ending in 
I the famous battle of Cerestes, he expired at his post 
L from sheer exhaustion. His memory is preserved by 
a brass tablet in the Embassy chapel in Pera. 

Turning again to the stories which we have of life 
l and captivity among the Turks, it is remarkable how 
strongly they bring to light the religious constancy of 
< the authors. Protestants and Roman Catholics alike 
1 appear as finding their main hope and comfort in the 
j firm belief that they are the individual objects of divine 
interposition. Each hairbreadth escape from death at 
the hands of fanatical Turks or of " raging Tartarians," 
by sudden decapitation or by the lingering torture of 
the gauck, is duly ascribed to the protection of the 
Almighty and is followed invariably by a pious tribute 
of thanksgiving. The steadfastness of Christian cap- 
tives and the palpable faith of such men as those, who, 
in the appalling surroundings of the arsenal prison, 
would sacrifice their infinitesimal gains to provide them- 
selves with an altar and the necessary accessories for 
the celebration of mass, must surely have turned many 
a strict Turk to secret admiration of the religion which 
he was bound outwardly to spurn. 

A perpetual reminder of the days when the sufferings 
of prisoners in Turkey were constantly present in men's 
minds exists still in the special intercession in the 
Litany framed originally in their behalf — and during 
the recent war restored awhile to its old significance : — 
That it may please thee to have mercy on all prisoners 
and captives ; we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. 

All our characters have now passed across the 
stage, from the Sultan to the galley-slave, and, on the 



242 Prisoner in the Galleys and Black Tower 

exit of this last, the curtain falls. The scenes have, 
perhaps, somewhat lacked cohesion, and chronology- 
has been sadly ignored, but I have done my best to 
compound a whole which will tempt the reader's ima- 
gination to reconstruct a picture of old Turkey. A 
picture it will be of motley colours and fantastic outlines, 
a blending of East and West meeting for once on the 
common borderline and giving birth to as strange an 
outcrop of civilization as has ever flourished in the 
world's history. 



GLOSSARY 



Turkish and other foreign words which occur in this book, excepting 
those whose meaning is given in the text 

Asper. An old Turkish coin. 

Bailo. Bailiff or diplomatic agent (Italian). 

Caique. A light build of boat, peculiar to the Bosphorus. 

Capitulations. The early treaties between Turkey and the European 
Powers by which the latter claim extensive extra-territorial rights, in 
particular that of exercising jurisdiction over their nationals through 
the Consular Courts. The Capitulations were still in force when war 
broke out in 1914. 

Divan. The Turkish Council of Ministers ; also a long, low settee running 

round the sides of a room. 
Fetva. Legal decision or verdict pronounced by the Sheikh-ul-Islam or 

other qualified doctor of Mohammedan theology and law. 
Gauch. An instrument of torture and death, consisting of a scaffolding 

set at intervals with large meat-hooks on to which the victim was 

thrown from above, and, being impaled, was left to die slowly. 
Ghiaour. An infidel (i.e., non-Mussulman). 

Hajji. Pilgrim, a title retained for life by one who has made the pilgrimage 
to Mecca. 

Hoji. Corruption of the foregoing, or of Hoja (Khwaja) = " Dominie" (a 

schoolmaster or teacher). 
Imam. A minor religious functionary who leads the faithful in prayer and 

may have charge of a small mosque. 
Jehad. Religious war. 
Khan. Chieftain; also an inn. 
Maidan. A large open space. 

Maiina. A sailing boat resembling a dhow (from the Italian). 

Mufti. An interpreter of Koranic law, from whom a fetva (see above) is 

sought. 
Oghlan. Boy. 

Pashalik. A large administrative area, governed by a Pasha. 
Pillau or Pillaf. A dish of boiled rice, spiced and garnished with various 
delicacies. 

Proveditore. A Venetian colonial governor or commander-in-chief. 
Rayah. Christian subject of the Turks. 
Sakka. Water carrier. 

Sanjak. A small administrative area ; also the official governing the same 

(lit.: a flag). 
Sanziacke. Corruption of foregoing. 

Selamlik. Friday service at one of the mosques at the capital, attended 

by the Sultan in state. 
Seraglio. Palace (Italianized form of Turkish word serai). 
Sofraji. Butler. 

Sultan-valida. The mother of the reigning Sultan. 
Tekye'. Monastery. 
Top. A cannon. 
Ttifang. A gun. 

Ulema (plural of the Arabic word alim). The body of " doctors " or pro- 
pounders of the religious law (lit. : men of knowledge). 
Zaim. The holder of a ziamet or fief. 



CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY 

J. B. PEACE, M.A., 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




